We are honored to announce that all three of the D’Eri boys will be participating in the Autism Speaks Employment Think Tank in Manhattan, NY on June 12th and 13th. Andrew will be a part of the self-advocate panel on June 12th made up of individuals all across the spectrum who’ll each give their prospective on employment. This conversation will inform and shape the discussion on June 13th, which both John and Tom will be participating in. The June 13th panel will be facilitated by James Emmett - one of the nation’s foremost disability employment consultants and a member of the CanDo team - and will consist of a small group of leaders in the business community focusing on how we can change the flat-lining employment trajectory of a group of citizens who are far too often overlooked in the job market.

The goal of this event is to produce tangible, practical and positive outcomes in terms of increasing employment of adults with autism, as well as for the businesses that hire them across the entire corporate landscape. We are thrilled to be part of this event and hope that we can add valuable insight! 

Hi everyone,

All of us here at CanDo Business Ventures have been working diligently on building our first venture, Rising Tide Car Wash. In preparation for the launch of Rising Tide’s website (summer 2012) we have put together a brand story which we hope will paint a vivid picture of what we’re all about! Check it out below and feel free to give us some input!!

“This is Andrew, a perfectly capable young man whose autism has kept him, and his hopes of employment, beached up on the shore. Right now, he’s waiting for the tide to come in to save him from the grips of the sand and bring him into the ocean where he belongs.  Well, for Andrew and many like him, the tide has yet to come in because most of society has deemed them as incapable of being real contributors to their communities when all they really need is a rising tide. This misunderstanding of the ability people with autism have has lead to an unemployment rate of over 90% among those on the spectrum. What’s worse is that while many of these people are employable in the right situation, and thus capable of being contributors to their communities, their unemployment carries huge costs to society. According to statistics from the Autism Society, services to adults with autism cost the U.S. approximately $36 billion annually.

We’re here to change the way society looks at people with autism using the car wash industry as our tool to raise the tide. But why a car wash? Well, CanDo Business Ventures, our parent company, has identified the car wash industry as an excellent opportunity because of its great labor profile for many people with autism based on their affinity for process oriented and repetitive tasks, awesome community exposure due to its location on main roads and hyper-local customer base and potential to scale since the industry is both international and highly fragmented. We believe that the interplay between these factors give Rising Tide the vehicle it needs to both employ many people with autism and create a movement to change the perception of people with autism’s ability to contribute to society, thus impacting the lives of everyone with autism.

To harness this opportunity, we’ve designed our business to give our people with autism the initial surge they need to be elite car wash professionals and great contributors to their communities by implementing a world class training program, incorporating sensory design principles into our car washes and utilizing technology to overcome social communication barriers. With this heightened tide, we believe our professionals with autism are the best car wash professionals you can find anywhere because they love to focus on details, follow a process to the letter and take great pride in producing a clean car every time.

The awakening that all people with autism need is an initial push has made us believe that there is a plethora of beached potential out there that has been given up on, when all they need is a rising tide to get them off the shore and into the ocean. This has inspired us to constantly search out new forms of unseen potential like using renewable energy to help power our site, recycling all of our water and selling an array of products in our shop that contribute to creating a better world. But most of all, we want to share this inspiration with our customers to help them see the potential they are capable of creating by raising their tide.“

GarageTek, Inc. is an international franchise which provides garage storage solutions. GarageTek’s president, Marc Shuman has agreed to leverage his considerable knowledge of franchise development to help guide Rising Tide’s franchise offerings. We are honored to work with Marc and GarageTek and believe that with their guidance, Rising Tide will be able to scale quickly and impact the lives of many adults with autism.

GarageTek is universally recognized as the international industry leader in garage storage solutions according to the preeminent consumer ranking publication, as well as numerous other independent studies. GarageTek’s franchise network spans 60 domestic markets as well as the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, South Africa and the Russian Federation. 

Does your business do something awesome for the community? Do you touch people’s lives in a meaningful way? Well if you do, it’s time to get the word out and start engaging with as many people as you can!

I just finished reading The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk (which I found super insightful by the way) and had some ideas on how social enterprises which work in physical communities can use social media to better engage with their patrons. Before I start, I must confess that I came up with these ideas by thinking about our first venture, Rising Tide Car Wash, so they might not be right for every community centric social enterprise but they should at least get your creative juices going.

Linking your physical presence to your online presence

If you provide a service (like a car wash) you have the opportunity to let people at your shop know what others are saying about you online and vice versa. Applications like Yelp, Foursquare and Gowalla give you a great opportunity to promote open and honest dialogue with your customers online but I think this can be taken one step further. I like the idea of having screens set up at your location which show live feeds of what people are saying about you on social media platforms. To me this could be a great way to show customers you care about what they say, are proud enough of your service to allow everyone to see what people are saying (both good and bad), and invite more people to join the discussion. Today everyone has a smart phone and is using mobile social media, so imagine how engaging it would be for a person at your location to write something on say, Yelp, and see it immediately be posted for everyone else in the location to check out. This would also be a great way to limit poor customer experiences because you could respond to their complaint while they were still at your establishment.

Creating Local Social Experiences

When you say social media most people think of fully virtual experiences like Twitter and Facebook but there are some really cool ways to make tangible experiences out of social media. For example you could create a promotion using Geocaching  (A real-world outdoor treasure hunting game where players try to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, using GPS-enabled devices and then share their experiences online) which gives away or provides a deep discount for your service.

Geocaching is cool but I think Solar Mosaic is providing one of the greatest ways to connect with your community. Solar Mosaic crowdfunds solar energy projects where a local business or nonprofit offers their rooftop as a host site. Then individual community members invest in a small amount of solar cells (called tiles) until the project is fully funded. Once the project is in operation the project host (you) pays the community investors for the energy created. WOW think about that for a second, you can help your community do a great thing, literally give the community a sense of ownership of your business, market yourself as a green business, and possibly lower your electricity bill in the process! If that’s not a win-win-win proposition I don’t know what is.

Use smaller social media platforms to reach the people directly interested in what you do

Everyone knows they should be on Facebook but have you considered the smaller sites? There are community forums for virtually every interest and these are the places where you can really connect with your target market. You can create dialogue, write blogs or answer people’s questions using your expertise. For example, if you provide a service for oh say, autism, (I don’t want to unabashedly promote my social enterprise, but that’s what we do) you should actively participate on the countless autism forums and blog sites.  

I hope you found my ideas helpful! If you have any questions or would like to bounce around ideas, please contact me at tderi@candobiz.com

We are very excited to announce that we will be collaborating with Catchafire to help our organization build capacity and scale more quickly!

Catchafire will help us to identify our needs as short-term, discrete, and individual-based projects, and then match these projects to skilled pro bono professionals. We hope to develop lasting partnerships with the professionals we engage with and organizations we meet through the Catchafire network.

Catchafire’s vision is to make it easy for every social good organization to access and effectively use pro bono as a way to build capacity within their organization, and we are thrilled to join the pro bono movement.

Ah the thought of building your own social enterprise to help solve a problem you care deeply about; doesn’t it just give you goose bumps? I know it inspires us to wake up every morning and get to work. There is nothing more exhilarating than when you first come up with a great idea and start brainstorming and visualizing what it could become. For some of us, that excitement is enough to take bold action and quit our jobs or pass up other opportunities to pursue something that can change the world.  For us that idea was to create a company which built businesses structured specifically to employ and provide for autistic people. We believe that autistic people have the ability to be contributing members of society and the right to have the opportunity for gainful employment.

Even with all that energy and enthusiasm, eventually reality sets in and we realize how much work there is to make our dreams a reality. This can be a daunting reality but as an entrepreneur you must remain undeterred.  However, you need not go through this process alone. You should absolutely look for partners and try to find volunteers who are passionate about your cause. Social entrepreneurs have such an advantage over traditional start ups because there are a ton of great resources available to you and so many people are eager to help. In just a couple months we have already found some great people who are willing to help us grow and we will continue to look for more great people to help us achieve our mission. (If you’re reading this and would like to get involved or if you know someone who may like to get involve please contact us!)

We’d love to share some of our insights into how you can create a network and educate yourself.

Here are some great resources for new social entrepreneurs:

Educational Sites

My picks: Social Edge and Social Earth

These sites are great sources of news and information on social entrepreneurship

Social Enterprise Accelerators

My picks: Catchafire (in the U.S.) and ClearlySo (in the U.K.)

Catchafire is a great organization which acts as an “eHarmony” between social enterprises (both For Profit & Non Profit) and professionals who wish to volunteer their skills.

ClearlySo helps social enterprises become funding ready and subsequently help them find investors.

People Incubators

My Picks: StartingBloc and Sandbox Network

StartingBloc, through its Fellowship and Social Innovation Institutes, helps educate budding social innovators and connects them with the other outstanding people in the StartingBloc network.

The Sandbox Network helps young achievers build meaningful relationships with like-minded peers, learn from senior leaders and gain access to opportunities that will help them grow.

Some more advice to new social entrepreneurs….

Reach out to the pros

Don’t hesitate to reach out to successful social entrepreneurs and innovators whom you admire. Most of the time they are super helpful and love to hear about new people trying to make a difference.

Leverage your existing network

Don’t take the contacts you already have for granted. Make sure you contact your university to see how they may be willing to help, get in touch with old colleagues, and talk to friends and family about your idea. More often than not, great connections come from sources you may not expect so don’t dismiss people you know as “not being in the right circles” because that’s a wasted resource (not to mention pretentious).

Work, Work, Work

For all of you new entrepreneurs out there, you may be tempted to “work when you feel like it”. It’s very tempting when you become your own boss to slack off but this will kill you. You must become obsessed with what you are doing, must truly live and breathe it and dedicate your whole self to it. It is the only way to be successful!

I hope this was at least slightly helpful to anyone looking to build a social enterprise, I wish you all success, and please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions!