Feb 5, 2020
My guest this week is Liz
Bohannon, the CEO and founder of Sseko Designs, a fair trade,
socially conscious fashion brand that is providing dignified jobs
in developing nations around the world. Sseko Designs also gives
university scholarships to the brightest, young female leaders in
East Africa. This is actually Liz’s second time on the show! You
can hear our first conversation all the way back at episode
#28 in March of
2017! Over the years, Liz and I have become dear friends
and it was so great having her back on the show! Join me to hear
about Sseko Designs, Liz’s first book Beginners
Pluck, and how Liz has lived a life of purpose,
passion, and impact.
4:53 – The Liz 201 (A Business
Model Change)
- Liz has been running her ethical
fashion brand, Sseko Designs for ten years. Three years ago, the
organization experienced a fundamental shift as a company when they
decided to shut down their wholesale channel.
- They knew they were creating
change for women all over the world with fair wages, education, and
strong communities, but recognized that they were not fostering the
same community on the retail side of their business
yet.
- When Sseko started 10 years ago,
the term “social enterprise” didn’t exist. Sseko started to wonder
if they could take the “business of good” and put it into the hands
of regular, everyday consumers.
- They launched Sseko Fellows, a
social selling model to put products in the hands of women to sell
Sseko products. It was a very small-scale beginning, but taught
Sseko how to build a better model for women to earn a legitimate
income. Liz knew that there were more women who also wanted to
dream big to help women who also want to build their own
businesses.
- Sseko Fellows evolved into a
social enterprise with teams that create full-time, fair-waged jobs
for a year for artisans across the globe as well as university
scholarships for the brightest female scholars in East
Africa.
- When people are provided
dignified, fair-wage opportunity, they are far less likely to be
trafficked into an illegal labor market. Often those who fall
victim to these crimes are answering fake job ads, desperate to get
out of poverty and unaware that it’s a trap until it’s too
late.
- When basic needs are met through
safe jobs, the cycle of evil and abuse can be stopped.
15:49 – A Woman Connected to Her
Purpose
- While there are so many volunteer
and non-profit causes that help make the world better, Liz and her
team also recognized that women have more time and energy to
contribute without burning out when they are equipped with a
competitive salary and business resources.
- If the way a woman contributes to
her passion and purpose also generates an income, you free her to
focus on social change work while making sure her childcare needs,
bills, mortgage payments, car payments, groceries, etc. are not
going to be a burden.
- Something really magical happens
when we know that there are others who want to show up and cheer
for us. That is the atmosphere Sseko strives to create.
- When people, particularly women,
start new endeavors, the world often sits and waits for them to
fail. Sseko women are encouraged to dream big with support from a
like-minded sisterhood that helps set them up for
success!
- In the last few years, the Sseko
community both in the United States Fellows Program and the
Scholarship and Business programs in Africa have fostered a global
family of women supporting women and championing each other through
community, not competition.
- If you don’t find community and
make an impact, Sseko will fully refund your starter kit
investment, which is only $150 for $400 worth of product. Working
with Sseko not only brings financial freedom, enjoyable work, and
finding a purpose, but the most common response from Sseko women
about what they get out of the program is that they’ve found
genuine female friendships to help in hard times and celebrate in
the good.
29:48 – Become a Sseko
Fellow
If you are interested in learning
more, you too can join me as a Sseko Fellow! All you have to do is
go to https://ssekodesigns.com/mollystillman and click
the “Join Now” link at the top menu bar!
32:05 – Fun Bonus:
You should probably all check out
Liz’s cooking show with her two-year-old son, Theo on Instagram
(@lizbohannon)
33:05 - Beginner's Pluck: Build
Your Life of Purpose and Impact Now
- Liz just wrote her first book
called Beginner’s
Pluck. I read it in a day and a half. It’s not your
typical book on business, it’s much better. This is the book you’ll
want to help you truly grow right where you are rather than just
hearing feel good mantras.
- Finding your passion isn’t a
magical, one-time moment. Your life matters and you can make a
difference, but it doesn’t just happen naturally for
anyone.
- Liz shares new ways of thinking
about things that leaves people relieved and removes the pressure
around achievement and shifts it to waking up to one’s own
voice.
- It’s a model of tapping into
people’s lives and meaning rather than their fears and emotions for
short-term bursts of engagement.
- We can combine our faith with
action and work. When you put in the work, God will bless that
work.
- It applies to goal setting and
risk taking as well. Complacency and fear-driven desires for safety
to keep from looking ridiculous or taking risks that are too big
removes the opportunity for God to show up and do things we
couldn’t dream up on our own.
- If we’re always playing it safe
and our primary concern is survival, we limit our potential. If you
spend all your time dodging failure, you’ll never chase after the
“what if” dreams.
- Don’t forget that failure is a
necessary and unavoidable process. That experience leads you to the
moment when your dream finally “clicks.”
- If you’re stuck in overwhelm, this
book is for you. Your dream is within your grasp right where you
are, whether in the good or the messy.
- Liz has hopes that leaders will
subscribe to this way of thinking to help their teams, employees,
clients, etc. There is even a prison using Beginner’s Pluck to turn
lives around!
- You’ve got to start. Even if it’s
an ugly start. You don’t get to evolve until you put yourself out
there for the first time. An immature and over-inflated sense of
ego happens we think we’ll automatically be successful right out of
the gate.
55:55 - Getting To Know Our
Guest
- Find out what stunt Liz pulled off
after her talk at the Global Leader’s Summit. At 1:07:52 to learn
walk Liz would choose as her “walk up song,” what she thinks we’ll
be nostalgic for in forty years, her favorite lipstick color right
now (because it’s so much fun) and of course, what it means to Liz
to run a business with purpose.
Memorable Quotes:
15:51 - “A woman on a mission who is
connected to her purpose, who is connected to her passion, can
literally change the world.”
28:22 “We are going to be a
community of women who are collectively ambitious. You do not have
to worry about too much or dreaming too big. You get to be
surrounded by people who say: ‘This is how I can support you.’
“
38:03 - “Once you have peace and an
understanding of what it actually looks like to build a life of
purpose, passion, and impact, that actually propels you
forward.”
55:14 – “Me messing up doesn’t mean
I’m broken; it doesn’t mean I’m not the right person for the job.
It means that I’m trying to do something that is
difficult.”
“You only have the opportunity to
fail when you choose to do something that is a little bit out of
your reach.”
“We started to wonder if Sseko could be a
company that pioneers this idea of democratizing social
entrepreneurship and business for good.”
Connect with Sseko
Designs:
About Liz:
Liz Forkin Bohannon is the founder of Sseko Designs and the
author the book Beginner’s Pluck: Build your life of purpose,
passion and impact now.
Sseko Designs is an ethical fashion brand that works to
educate and empower women. By providing employment and educational
opportunities, Sseko enables women to continue their education and
become leaders in their country.
Liz graduated from the University of Missouri with a
Master’s degree in Journalism. In 2008, she moved to Uganda where
she met an incredible group of talented young women who were
struggling to finance their higher education.
After traveling the country by motorcycle to find raw
materials and learn how to produce footwear by hand, Liz hired
three young women and started Sseko Designs. Since then, Sseko
Designs has grown from three women making sandals together under a
mango tree, to an international fashion brand that provides
employment, educational opportunities and entrepreneurial training
to hundreds of women in East Africa and across the globe.
Using her unlikely story of a journalist-gone-shoe-maker,
Liz shares her passion for social enterprise, conscious
consumerism, social justice, creative leadership and
gender-equality.
Liz and the Sseko story has been featured in dozens of
publications including: Vogue Magazine, Redbook Magazine, O
Magazine, Inc, Fortune and others. Sseko has appeared on national
broadcasts including ABC’s Shark Tank and Good Morning
America.
Among other notable honors, Liz was recently named a top three
Transformation Leader by John Maxwell and Bloomberg Businessweek
named Sseko as a top social enterprise. Forbes named Liz one of the
top 20 public speakers in the U.S. Liz’s powerful,
disarmingly authentic and witty voice captivates and inspires her
audience.
She now splits her time between Uganda and Portland, Oregon,
where she and her husband Ben run Sseko Designs and raise their two
young sons.
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