Vicki Saunders On Radical Generosity Envisioned By Women In Social Entrepreneurship

Vicki Saunders is an entrepreneur, award-winning mentor, advisor to the next generation of change-makers and leading advocate for entrepreneurship as a way of creating positive transformation in the world.

Vicki is Founder of #radical generosity and Coralus (formerly SheEO), a global community of radically generous women supporting women-led Ventures working on the World’s To-Do List.

Vicki has co-founded and run ventures in Europe, Toronto and Silicon Valley and taken a company public on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Vicki has received numerous awards for her work at Coralus including; UBS Global Visionary in 2020, YWCA Women of Distinction Award in 2020, Business Leader of the Year 2019 by the Toronto Regional Board of Trade, 2018 Startup Canada Entrepreneurship Promotion Award and was selected as a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum in 2001.

Vicki discusses how her community of activators are challenging the status quo with radical generosity and powerful pathways to reimagine and value various forms of resourcefulness.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Sarah Ripper] - To start off, could you please share a bit about your background and what led you to your work in the social impact space?

[Vicki Saunders] - I had always been in the social impact space before we knew that [was what it was called]. From a very young age, I just remember hearing about how the stock market works because my dad was a stockbroker. I just couldn't understand it, it didn't make any sense to me. Basically, it sounded like a casino, that’s how I viewed it. I was really interested in business, but the stuff I wanted to do was solve problems and fix things, because at the time, I thought you needed to fix things, which I don't really think anymore.

I was fascinated with how you can do good and make money at the same time. Back then, people would say, "don't be ridiculous Vicki. Go make money, and then give it away." That just never fit for me, so I was always looking to create new business models, and I was fascinated by that. But then, a really big thing happened to me. I was in Europe when the [Berlin] Wall fell, and so I got on a train and immediately went over to Eastern Europe. I ended up staying for five years in Prague, and I was completely transformed by the experience.

For the first time in my life, I was surrounded by an entire country of people where everybody was dreaming about what they were going to do now they were free.

Every conversation [started with] "now that I'm free, I'm going to do this," or "now that I'm free, I'm going to do that." I realised I'm free too, so what am I going to do? I was in my mid-twenties, and I had (at that point) all these layers of expectation on me of what I was supposed to do. I used to think that because I’m Vicki Saunders, who grew up in this place with these people, I should make this much money. There were layers of other people's expectations on me also, so eventually I washed it all off and asked, "if I was totally unafraid, what would I do?" I looked around and saw people needed to learn English, and I knew English, so that's why I started an English language school. Then, I started all these other businesses while also getting my friends to start businesses. One day, someone said, "why are you doing this here instead of in your own country?"

I was 29 at the time, and this became the organising question of my whole life: how do you create the conditions and environment for people to be their best selves?

I answered this within a business context, so incubators and accelerators. I did a bunch of projects over the years. Throughout this I kept asking how do you surround people with what they need, find your greatness make sure you're surrounded by other people who have greatness in areas you don't, and then flow, go forth and change things?

Was there a particular influence leading you to go back home?

No, not really. I think it was time. I guess it involved questioning how do you get people to that they're free when they're already supposed to be free? I really started to navigate and understand a lot of the mindset barriers and internal dialogue which limits our thinking. I did a tonne of personal work, navigating and de-conditioning myself (like getting out of my own way), using business as the place to do that.

Every single day, you get triggered by things when you're running your business, so I use it as my vehicle for transformation essentially.

As the Founder and an Activator at Coralus, can you please share more about this enterprise, its purpose, and the impact it’s generating?

As a pretty much lifelong entrepreneur having received all kinds of funding out there (grants, loans, et cetera), and then being a woman in the world living in these systems that we're not designed by us or for us, I'm very innovative. I think super differently than most people; I just have a really different perspective. I started to accumulate all these experiences and have a lot of conversations asking female founders if you were starting over again, would you really design things the way they are? Then, when I found out that about 2% of global capital goes to 51% of the population, I was astounded. Clearly that system is broken, so you don't want to just create a woman's version of all these existing models, because that's not going to work. This is what most people do, because that's all we see, and we think this is the only way to do things.

I thought about if we really reimagined it all, how would we create the conditions to support women and non-binary founders who are out there really trying to change things, by creating better healthcare systems, zero packaging or flexible work models that serve humans instead of the other way around?

We need to rethink everything, and there are all kinds of cool ideas out there, and so I decided to get some capital together. That's the hard part, getting women to write checks is hard in the existing way, but we're doing it in a super different way. Basically, we have a ‘subscription model to the future’. Our pitch is let's subscribe to the world you want to create and do it together. We're creating the world together, and we're subscribing together to do that. It's $92 a month, it's such a fun experience. You can be doing whatever you are doing in your world, getting your safe salary, or doing whatever you're doing, but here you get to go play. Come on over, dip your toe into what the future could look like. We pull this money together, and then once a year in your country [we're doing this in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the U.S. and the UK], entrepreneurs apply who are in the majority women and satisfy all these criteria. You apply, and then we vote, so everybody who's in the subscription go in and read through these super cool applications of what people are doing. Literally before this interview, I just got off phone with this woman Jo Lane, who's got a kelp products business we just funded in Australia. There are no kelp firms in Australia - none. You import seaweed to Australia, it's a $15 billion industry and a huge opportunity. She has this idea, she's been working on it for years, it's amazing, she's got revenue, et cetera. These are the types of businesses that apply, women in the community vote, and it's a totally democratic process.

We disrupt all the power dynamics that usually happen when four people decide what the world should look like. We don't do that; we have a whole collective decision-making process. Upon selection, these entrepreneurs get a 0% interest loan, and then all of us can help them. I'm helping right now by telling the story, you're helping by doing the podcast, someone else might make an introduction so someone buys her kelp products, tells people about it, and we all just contribute our little bit. We just watch things grow and we're all part of collectively doing this. Now we have funded 170 ventures around the world and we're all in this community together, learning how to do things differently.

In the beginning people would say, "I wouldn't know how to pick a business." To this I tell them you do it every day. You go to a store, and you buy things, that's creating an economy. You're deciding what the world looks like by what you buy. It's fun, and we have a super high payback rate. 95% of the time, we're loaning this money out, it goes to those that the community wants it to go to, they pay it back, and then it rolls forward to the next person, so this will be here for our daughters, granddaughters, everyone following us for generations. It's a totally different inheritance we get to leave behind.

What are the core values of Coralus and what do they look like in action?

One of our first big values is generosity. We like to call it radical generosity. I've spent a lot of time with elders, a lot of time with people way older than me asking them about what the meaning of life is? Since I was a little kid, I've just been asking, "why are we here? What's the point of all this?" Some of the things I noticed from these folks I was hanging out with were that they were all women, and they were incredibly generous, like unbelievably generous.

I kept noticing that the more generous you are to other people around you, the more likely they are to tell you what's really going on with them, maybe even share the dreams they have inside of them. When we are in these safer environments, we can show up fully as ourselves and be accepted.

Then we're thinking, "oh, I'm okay the way I am. I don't have to change anything. I don't have to fix things." Most environments in the world are not generous, they're not that kind. We're quite harsh on each other, and so we keep ourselves smaller.

The number one thing I think would change so much in the world is if we showed up with this spirit of generosity with each other and with ourselves. If you're having a rough day, give yourself a break and be generous, don't keep kicking yourself when you're done.

Another core value that's important to us is transformation; this commitment to transforming yourself and what’s around you.

You must be aware of how you're being in the world, how you're acting and where your biases are. You must be working on that through getting experience with others.

Racial justice working groups and all different organisations in our communities over the years have helped as we try to decondition ourselves, because the time that we're in right now requires us to imagine our way out of it. We're not going to think our way out of it with rational thinking, because all our systems are based on the past and the way we've done things.

We must rethink the world, we must think about what we value, and the planet is more important than profits to me, because there are no profits without a planet.

People are the same thing, and so we just need to adjust what's going on here. The more people that are involved in a shared vision of how the world could look different, the more we're going to create that world. For people that really think what we are doing is the only way to do things, this structure is all made up. Every single system and structure are made up by humans, 400 years ago for a super different time. They are not working anymore, so let's change it. Right now, five people have the same wealth as half the planet, which is a terrible economic model! This is not about winner takes all, this is not what's going to serve us. It's going to make us extinct. Transformation in particular and then generosity are really critical, and outside of those values we have lots of others you can see on our website coralus.world.

What are some actionable steps and key learnings you'd suggest to changemakers who are looking to grow their organisations or level up their impact?

One mindset I've been working on transforming for a long time [and I can't believe I bought into this myth for so long] is this one of scarcity, that there's not enough for everyone. This is so not true. Another one of the things we talk about a lot is abundance. There's enough for everyone, it's just badly organised. As a changemaker or someone who just really would like things to look different, I think you need to find out where others are doing things differently and join the parade.

Get in a community, get involved and if you see people that are running businesses you're inspired by or interested in, join those communities, and learn from them.

The way we're conditioned is that I need to be ready to be in a place like that. No, go when you're not ready, that's the best time to start. Don't be perfect, like all those things you think you need to.

Find a place where you can ask for support, where you can share what's going on, where people can help you with that journey and make it easier. Everything is easier in community, everything.

If you're finding yourself alone and you have created a narrative of being alone, you've got to break that down. That's the hard part to break through, and the easiest way to do that is in a community, because then people can see you and say, "hey, you're amazing. What is this thing you are doing?" You might be thinking that this is ‘what you do all the time’, because we tend to undervalue what we're amazing at because it's so easy for us. It's important to get in these communities, and witness that when you're doing certain things effortlessly, there are other people who do all those things you're bad at. Also, they would like to share them, because it's easy for them, just like you share what you're good at. This is so mind-blowingly simple, but we're organised to think you must do all this stuff yourself. That's just a total recipe for suffering and disaster, and that's how I spent most of my life! Now it's so much easier, because I'm in this community of all these people who are sharing and open to giving to each other. It's so different, it's like entering a whole new world. It's hard to see this stuff yourself, I think this is why we're social creatures, right? We can show each other, we can hold up the mirrors for each other.

I don't know about anyone else listening to this, but by the time I was in my twenties, I had been told literally everything that's wrong with me a couple hundred times if not more. You just get picked at all the time. People say, "you should be better at this," and "have you tried this," or "why aren't you doing this?” To be in a place where people will tell you you're awesome is a whole different ballpark. It just brings out a different person who's inside of you.

Where do you see opportunities arising for impact-led individuals to start their own initiatives and generate a positive social change?

I have no idea, it's more about where do they see opportunities like that? There's an endless bucket of things, it's impossible for me to list them. I could walk down the street and find 32 new businesses in a block, just from all the things I see that seem so backwards, wrong and weird. I started with little experiments, where I asked if things could be done differently? You might then do something differently and think, "oh yeah, that's way better." Then, what else could you tweak? Start with small steps, start with the place where you're amazing. Most people start with what's hard; I've sat at too many tables with founders saying let's find something hard to solve. Why? Why don't you find something easy to solve, that you are perfectly made for?

The only two questions I'm fascinated by when I meet a new founder is why you (so why are you the person to be solving this problem) and why now (is this something that's really needed in the world right now)?

Why you and why now, if you have a good answer to that, go on, then find the others. I think a lot of the ways we've taught business and change making in schools is to find a market niche and exploit it. If that's in your head, don't do that. It's tough to be an entrepreneur, so find the thing you're obsessed with; the thing you're going to wake up and do every day. The task that makes you think, "I have to solve this thing, I can't sleep until it's done."

You need that passion burning in you, and if you don't have something that's at that level, start taking baby steps towards something and you'll find it on the path.

What are some inspiring projects or initiatives you've come across recently that are creating a positive social change?

It's not necessarily the content of what people are doing which inspires me, although that's cool too. The thing that most inspires and lights me up every day is when someone steps out of their comfort zone to do something that's crazy. “I think there should be kelp farms in Australia, we need to have kelp farms.” Seven years later, Jo Lane is still there trying to convince people to invest in Sea Health Products, and she finally just found an open door in South Australia. That inspires me, when there is a person to do that work and they know it and will do anything to support folks doing stuff like that.

I love Education, and so I'm passionate about people trying to rethink how we do school. One of our entrepreneurs has a company called Twenty One Toys, and she thinks toys are the new textbooks, because you can't really learn the skills of the 21st century from reading a theory, toys are experiential. Then there is failure, you need to learn these skills and understand them, so we get out there in this imagination time. She's created these cool toys people play with to learn this. Employees at banks that have empathy as one of their values are all being trained on this right down to kids in kindergarten, so I love stuff that gets at the meaty things, because learning is lifelong. It isn't the case we need something for curriculum in grade five where you're learning a specific thing. It's not that, it's more like what experiences can we create for people to think differently and create the future we want?

To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our listeners?

I just did this fun podcast called 2 Pages, where you read two pages from your favourite book and then you do the podcast on it, which I thought was such a fun idea. The book that I chose was Astonishing the Gods by Ben Okri. He won the Booker Prize, he's a Nigerian poet and author based in London, and this opened my brain to imagining the world could look different. The concept of the book is this person goes to an island where all the most important things are invisible, and you must actually live by the values, which is so beautiful. The hospitals are places where you go when you're well, and they're full of music. The banks are a place where you deposit thoughts because those are the most important things. Money is not a thing. The highest form of education is the art of living and healing oneself. There are just beautiful really different values in this book, and I used to read it to my teams, because I remember reading it for the first time so vividly. That was the first time I ever read a non-fairy tale book, with a society that was completely the opposite of what we've got in front of us. If you can imagine that, we could totally change how these things look. We can change how school looks, we could change how healthcare looks, we could change how our homes look and how our businesses work. We got a little taste of this during COVID, when employers at first were saying, “no, you can't work at home,” but then billions of people started working at home! What do we really know? I love that book, Astonishing the Gods by Ben Okri.

Another book that was massively formative for me from a business perspective (and has the same kind of vibe) is called Birth of the Chaordic Age: by Dee Hock, who was the founder of VISA. He created a different organisation that never really took off. But I do believe he just had all these genius principles, and people will be writing about him in 20 years going, "oh, that's really what we should have been doing." His website is dwhock.com, and there are eight little essays on there about his management principles which I find fascinating.