On To The Next One
NGL writes about working with those experiencing homelessness, seeing projects through to the end, and how to scale mission-driven products through storytelling
Every…once in a while features new newsletters from Nathan Graber-Lipperman examining media, business, and pop culture through a Gen Z lens, as well as telling stories from his personal entrepreneurial journey. To read his last letter, click here.
“Have you ever worked with someone on crack before?”
It was a cold and dark Wednesday night in early February when I called up a friend of mine to talk about the logistics behind a project I’d been planning for a while. In its bluntness, the question they posited took me by surprise, and my heart skipped a beat. Do I know what exactly I’ve gotten myself into?
If you’ve been following our work and this newsletter, you’ll know that we’d worked on a collaborative capsule to celebrate small businesses in college towns across the country, as well as do our part to fight food insecurity. Our plan with our partner, D&D’s, was always to split the profits 50-50, but as the project started to push four, five, six months, I knew there was something more we could do with it.
After seeing what felts like an endless stream of photos of cars backed up for miles (like the one pictured above in Carson, CA) over the last year, as well as headlines that read like this, I came to a conclusion that could work for all parties. In November 2020, food banks reported seeing a 60 percent increase in demand compared to the previous year, all while donations were down and volunteers — oftentimes, retired folks — were spending less time out of the house.
People have been hurting, and Evanston has been no exception. So I thought to myself, We have a partnership with this awesome small business…that just so happens to be a grocery store. We have $264 to spend on food items. Why not bring in a third partner — a local nonprofit — to bring the project full circle and donate + volunteer in the process?
Which brings us to that Wednesday call. My friend has worked with an organization called Connections for the Homeless previously over the summer and volunteered every Friday morning from nine to noon, and we agreed it was a natural fit. Past just operating as a pantry, Connections helps individuals experiencing homelessness in the northern suburbs of Chicago by offering things like storage lockers, showers, mailboxes, social workers, and more.
The more I dug into it, the more I liked it. While there was definitely a degree of anxiety for entering a space I’ve never been to before — particularly during a global pandemic — as I talked to my friend, I felt confident in the ultimate decision to conclude the project in this fashion.
On Thursday, we made our run to D&D’s, filling up a cart with microwaveable soups, protein bars, and Frosted Flakes. One of the employee followed us around the store as we piled on items after item; when we finally made our way to the cash register, she ran and got us crates from the back so we could get everything to my car.
When I came back in to drop off our cart, the same employee — most likely accustomed to seeing me and other college students make beer runs at her store on Friday evenings — asked me what we were doing this all for. We were the guys selling the hoodies way back in the fall, I said, and we’re using half of the profits to buy groceries from your store and donate them.
In response, she teared up, and thanked me for thinking of D&D’s and the community as a whole.
I bring this all up for two reasons. First, I tried to approach this project in a different light than what I’ve done in the past. If you recall my last letter — where I wrote about decoupling productivity from self-worth — I mentioned the itchy feeling of never doing enough. This constant mentality has often forced me to move on, a Captain Ahab of sorts, chasing that next big adventure that’ll be the one, the one that accomplishes some undetermined goal.
For this project, I decided, Eff that. It might’ve been slow, but after we launched this thing all the way back in *checks notes* October, we let orders trickle in through January, when everything sold out before our February restock. This actively worked against every bone in my body, but by forcing myself to abstain from jumping ship, we were able to triple our revenue over the last three months and purchase more groceries at the store that day. (Author’s Note: The Captain Ahab metaphor really lost its meaning in this paragraph, huh…)
The second reason I bring this all up is because of another central decision I’ve made in the new year: systems over results. The eyes often wander and start thinking I’m not doing enough, these numbers aren’t impressive enough, and therefore no one gives a crap about what I have to say, so why I am I even bothering?
Nevertheless, it’s easy to have lofty goals and harder to execute on them when there’s no system in place. I’ve learned a heck of a lot about customer support and communication over the last several months in fulfilling orders, and we’ll be certain to implement some of these lessons into our logistics, supply chain, and overall operations moving forward. All of this itself was reason enough to chalk the project up as a success.
Past all of that, however, was something that really became apparent when I brushed the snow off my car and picked up my friend as we drove to Connections on a blustery Friday morning with a temperature in the teens. Overall, this project reminded me that businesses (and startups, in particular) are all about relationships, and the value you can create along the way.
Just by being in that environment, I picked up on a lot of things. The employees working at Connections wear a million different hats; as soon as you stamped out one fire, another one popped up behind you. In a sense, they were the ultimate entrepreneurs, solving problem after problem with creative solutions.
I also thought about all of the things I take for granted in a given day, too, like having an outlet to charge my phone, a warm chair to sleep in, and even knowing how to open a lock (my friend helped the same individual open his locker about four or five different times).
Standing in there — handing out cups of ramen to appreciative patrons, ramen we had bought at a small business I love — meant the world to me. This is why I spent all of that time screen-printing hoodie late into the night, I thought to myself, in a basement where my head was touching the ceiling and I had to weave to avoid the laundry machines.
This is what the idea behind mission-driven products through storytelling can accomplish.
I’m not crazy, after all.
I saw a tweet a couple weeks ago that went along these lines: “Whenever a person outside a store asks me for money, I give it to them so that I don’t spend it on drugs.”
I’m paraphrasing here, of course — I couldn’t find the specific tweet, but you get the gist of its meaning when considering the mentality that goes into our perceptions of homelessness. Yet seeing how much it takes to feed just a single room of 20 people with the cheapest food possible was eye-opening. When we brought all of the groceries in to Connections and the first wave of patrons came by, I thought there was a chance we bought too much, and we could’ve spaced out our purchases a little more.
Three hours later, and I was proven incredibly wrong. Everything practically flew off of the shelves.
As my friend and I left Connections around noon to return to our day-to-day lives — I was starting with a brand new therapist in less than an hour, after all, and I wanted to be prepared — I asked how this day compared to those they’ve experienced in the past.
“It was pretty mild,” they responded. Only two people were thrown out during our three-hour period, and the police were never called.
Gotcha, I said. After all, I had enjoyed the experience volunteering, having felt any lingering anxiety erased the second I initially walked through the doors. I dropped my friend off before promising I’d be back to help volunteer in the near future.
If you saw our email yesterday, you probably had a chance to look at the numbers. About $1.18k in revenue, with about 53% written off as costs, and only 22% ending up in our pocket.
I’m certainly not naïve about these numbers and what they mean for the growth potential of Unplugg’d, but again, system over results. We were able to make a discernible impact while sticking to our values, making money, and creating dope stuff. If that’s not proof concept enough, I’m not sure what is.
It also starts to beg the question…what does this look like at scale? For example, we found a ton of new customers through cheap Instagram ads. What happens if we had spent $100 on ‘em, rather than a mere $50? Do production costs become cheaper and more streamlined if we partner with an affordable printing company? And how much more can I channel into marketing if I’m not the one screen-printing hoodies in my overcrowded basement and delivering orders at midnight?
That’s where the growth potential starts to excite me. Not that this is an easy feat, but let’s say we do 10x in sales (or 300 units) while sticking to the same ratio. All of a sudden, you’re looking at $2.5k in profit going our way from a single project. 3,000 units, $25k…and so forth, without even considering alternative revenue streams, or how selling in bulk could potentially make things cheaper.
In any event, we’re working hard on our next big project, and we’ll be back to publishing more content on a regular basis in the near future. While I have plenty of ink to spill on things like Robinhood, the rise of NFTs + blockchain, and how much I love Wandavision, I’ll save it for now and leave you with one last thing: we’re hiring!
Wanna handle growth and operations for a busy startup? Conversant with Twitter and looking to leave your mark with a B2C brand? We’re opening up two paid, part-time roles from March 1 to June 1 for individuals with experience in these roles, so if you want to throw your hat in the ring (or know someone who might!), consider checking out our Chief Operations Officer and Social Media Coordinator roles.
From listening to the pod, reading my newsletters, and buying a sandwich, thanks to everyone who keeps making this storytelling experiment possible!
Thanks for reading this edition of ‘The G-L Review.’ If you liked it, consider sharing it with a friend or supporting us here. If you want to keep the conversation going, send me a reply at ngl@powderbluemedia.com and follow me on Twitter here!