Profit + Purpose: How Social Innovation Is Transforming Business for Good

Chapter ThreeBuild with Hustle

“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

—Antione de Saint-Exupéry

Newton's first law of motion dictates that an object stays at rest until acted upon by force. Even if that object is the best-designed product, it will never be successfully launched without exerting the right amount of force to get it in motion. That is what the building phase is all about—igniting the momentum necessary to launch a great product and a great company.

The most important factor in this phase is hustle.

So many pieces need to fall in place, from press to design to distribution, and at the prelaunch stage getting support and funding can take a good deal of persuasion. This is a messy process for many founders, of fits and starts, with daily challenges and many setbacks. Just think of how many of those the Embrace team had to overcome. Often the only way to succeed is with a great amount of audacity, energy, passion, and sheer hustle to rally all of the resources, people, and financing required.

Many great products never progress beyond this stage because the social innovator was not able to build the necessary momentum. There are many lessons about how to persevere and tactics for generating momentum from founders who have been willing to work every connection and try every angle.

The Intuitive Hustle

When Scott Harrison developed ...