2407 - Strengthening Business Resilience Through a Tri-Sector Mindset with New Impact's Jens Molbak

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0:46Visit podverify.com if you'd like to be featured as a future guest. I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it. With us right now, Jens Molbeck. Jens, you are the CEO and founder at New Impact. You're found on the web at newimpact.care. Jens, it's great to have you. Great to be here, Josh. I love the title of your podcast. Well, I think a lot of us aspire to be thoughtful. I think that definition, what that means, I think it'd be different for a lot of people. Just because you mentioned it, we need to get to your stuff. when you think of a thoughtful leader or a thoughtful entrepreneur, what do you think of?

1:26Well, we're going to get into that, right? But I mean, I consider myself a lifelong entrepreneur, but being thoughtful, being reflective, how you show up. I'm a big, huge believer in business as a force for good and how you can unite profit and purpose and how they can be synergistic and do stuff at scale faster, better, stronger. Well, that is going to be the topic of today's podcast. Before we get to that, Jens, I always love to hear what people do when they are not at work, high-level leaders, the things that they're passionate about. And I think you and I share a passion. You want to just kind of share that you and I were talking before we started hitting record.

2:03You got me thinking about two things. So first and foremost is I need to be outside every day, whether that's a walk, a hike. I love to bike. I love to ski, all forms of skiing, all forms of biking. And being out in nature is where I get, you know, strengths and energy and good thoughts. thoughts. It's how I maintain mental health, physical health, spiritual health. This is super important. And the other thing I'd add is, I mean, I have a routine every morning where I start up, you know, with some yoga and some reflective reading and some writing. And I find increasingly as I get older, that hour of kind of quiet time lets me be more effective and more productive throughout the time.

2:41So I'd say being outside and being engaged and spend a little bit of time on the inside too yeah i you know i and i you and i were just talking beforehand uh as of when i'm recording this i'm about to hit 60 days of putting uh wearing a rucksack and and actually going out uh kind of hiking or walking you know how much weight are you carrying out of curiosity what's that how much weight are you carrying so that's an interesting topic um so um personality wise And I bet there are a lot of people, a friend listening may identify with this. I have to very intentionally hold myself back from doing my capacity.

3:26And I have just learned this lesson the hard way far too many times in my life because the body is like, yeah, we can do 50, 60 pounds. but you know every trainer every you know and i kind of use a an ai coach as well no no no no all right we can we can talk about that a lot because i wear lingo for a walk i have a weighted vest yes and i'm kind of careful not to put too much in it and then when i'm riding the more i cycle the more i've realized low and slow baby it's zone two training for a long time and i used to be a pretty active athlete in my in my in my 20s and but now it's like it's just showing up and being consistent is really what provides that sort of health and wellness.

4:09Yep. Yep. So put your, you know, and this, that's exactly the advice that was given is like, turn your enthusiasm into consistency, consistency beats, you know, trying to see how much you can carry. So right now I've been at mostly 20 pounds, started off unencumbered at all, then went up to 20 pounds, experimented with 30 pounds for about a week, week and a half, just to see how it felt and then recognized i had started feeling a little bit of pain here and there and i'm like well the the worst thing in the world would be me not being able to do that or me losing that consistency so um yeah so i'm back down to 20 and i'm gonna i'm gonna wait uh you know probably one more we can bump back up to 30 then then you know i'm gonna let that ride for 30 45 days go up to 40 and eventually probably cap out at 50 pounds you could even i mean we can talk about health and wellness all podcasts but i'm a big fan of james clear and atomic habits yes yes the idea of like a one percent improvement so you could go from 20 pounds to 21 pounds to 22 yes and if you're always enjoying it then you keep coming back for more and the body is kind of adjusts as you go so yeah yeah you know you mentioned like a weighted vestment again that's the topic of the podcast is not weighted weighted walking but uh you know um the um oh gosh now what I completely forgot what I was going to say.

5:31And it was really important too. Oh, um, oh, it's what it does for the body. And this is the thing it's so, um, the really great analogy for anyone who's considered, you know, kind of walking, um, with a weighted vest or rucksack or whatever it's, you know, what it's really good for. And you may know a little bit more about this than I do, but it's a stabilizer muscles. So it's all those inner core muscles from all of that micro movement from stabilizing and holding that weight, you know, on yourself is really very compounding. So it's, you know, I heard it described as you're developing farmer strength, you know, and here's another thing too, is pain prevention.

6:15So I noticed when I wasn't as active that I would just get, I get just pain when I was sleeping. It's like, oh, I slept in the wrong position. Now that's, you know, but if you're just lubricating, getting that lymphatic system, getting all those nervous, you know, getting that system going every single day, I've noticed just in the past 60 days, I am just not sore anymore. And I know that that has, you know, that, that daily consistent movement has a lot to do with it. And I do think this kind of transitioning is sort of entrepreneurship. I think if you're building something for the long haul, right?

6:51And you want a sustainable business model, not necessarily sustainable in the sense of environmental, although it can be that, but sustainable, like something that's really built to last, right? To use the Jim Collins expression, that consistent dedication and showing up, I think is really important because you're going to go through lots of ups and downs along the journey, right? And so staying focused and staying strong, kind of no matter what comes your way, I think is a core, core, core element of entrepreneurship and character building, right? Hanging in there. 2 ,400 episodes or so of this podcast, I can tell you that is 100 % a consistent theme.

7:26I interview very few people that shot right like a rocket and instant automatic wealth kind of stuff. Everybody had to put in, they earned their stripes And the ones, you know, and some people get really knocked out of that because it's hard. Building a business is hard. Being a startup founder is hard. You are going to be pushed, you know, physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally. It is going to likely really test all of those facets of you. And if you can survive that and you can get to the point where everybody else throws in the towel, that's usually where that success is found. And I know, Jens, that that's a big part of your story and the work that you do with New Impact.

8:18Yeah, you know, and just dialing back before we get to New Impact, I mean, I built Coinstar, started Coinstar when I was 26, and I built it for, you know, for 13 years from sort of idea to, you know, a big, you know, effective company, right? But to stay through it, it takes a long time to be consistent. it it truly does tell me about your coin star story a little bit more oh i'm sorry yeah i think we we broke up uh showing up uh yeah let me ask that again um are i are you're you froze for a little bit here can you hear me now yeah i've got strong internet here so i don't know where the glitch came no yeah it's probably just a little blip um let me just ask that question again i'll let you pivot.

9:04And then I want to ask you about what Coinstar is and stuff. So just one second. So Jens, you know, as I mentioned, you know, I said that longevity, it's sticking with it. It's the consistency that really is the big delineator. And I know that that's a big part of your story with Coinstar. And again, your work now as the founder of New Impact. I'm sure you have some insight to share regarding your experience. I mean, I've told the Coinstar story a lot. I, you know, I lecture at university campuses for, you know, MBA students and undergrads. And, you know, one of the things I tell people who are interested in entrepreneurship is like, you know, Coinstar is, you know, it's a 10-year overnight success story.

9:46Everybody has the hockey stick graph, right? And not a lot of people talk about, you know, the long time that you spend on the flat part of the hockey stick graph, you know, building for that inflection point, right? And then the inflection point comes and you get really rapid growth and you have to be ready for it. So it's really a discipline to be able to anticipate when those inflections come and be ready for them, but also be able to tolerate not a lot happening for potentially a long period of time. So with Coinstar, I mean, that was my first company. I mean, I started it when I was 26. I had a jar of pennies, nipples, dimes and quarters on my desktop.

10:23And I just got super curious. So I used to have to take them to the bank and wrap them up in little paper wrappers and try to deposit them. And I was lazy. Right. So I was looking for an easier way. And I was actually in grad school. So I had some time on my own. I was taking classes. So I wrote to the Fed and I wrote to the Mint. And what I learned was my little pocket full of pennies was actually part of a$150 billion market. So the Mint and the Fed had produced about$15 billion as a physical coins to make the economy run. and I did a lot of market research. I hung outside of Bay Area supermarkets like, you know, I'm a grad student.

10:58Do you have any coins at home? And what I learned is about half of the coins were actually missing from circulation. So I called it America's Hidden Savings, about$8 billion in piggy banks, which is interesting, right? That's a lot of money. But more interesting to me was that the$7 billion that actually circulated to, you know, supply cash stores and stuff around the country turned over 20 times a year. So there's$150 billion of coins going through consumers' hands without an easy way to cash them back in. So I spent most of the second year in business school thinking about, well, you know, if I had a machine, where would I put it?

11:32So I ended up getting the machine and putting it in supermarkets. You know, and CoinStar scaled to, you know, 60 ,000 locations throughout the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. It's processed trillions of coins, billions of dollars over the last 30 years. And the entrepreneurial story of CoinStar is fairly well known. But what people often miss is that Coinstar, yes, it was a success and a billion dollar company and went public and all those sort of good things, which we can talk about. But it also had a huge impact on the federal government. Right. So we essentially created the national coin recycling system.

12:03And Coinstar has saved billions of reduced costs for the Fed by not having to mint new stuff and distribution costs. And we also raised hundreds of millions for nonprofits because we put out a donation feature on the machines. And that was really interesting. We designed that into the business model itself. So I'm really interested in business model designs that grow faster, help you find more customers, get access to new markets. But I think you can do it with what I call tri-sector business models, which is what I'm doing now with New Impact. Yeah, go ahead and explain. Yeah, well, let me just, so a little more of this, the Coinstar context, right?

12:41Because people often are like, what do you mean National Coin Recycling System? So when I was building it, we had our, I think we had a couple thousand machines out there and we're working hard. And we just rolled out our biggest rollout ever in Los Angeles. I think about 300 machines with bonds and Ralph's supermarkets. And I got back to Seattle and I had a phone call from the Fed in Washington, D.C., who I'd never talked to. And the phone call was, who are you? What are you doing? The West Coast has canceled all future penny orders. Come to D.C. and explain yourself. So on one hand, we're like fired up.

13:12You know, hey, the Fed called. you know, we're having this big impact. And what was happening, the machines were being swamped with all these people, you know, bringing in their old coins from their dresser tops. And they were being deposited into local Fed. And they were still getting shipments from the Denver Mint. And they're like, uncle, we got too much. So the Fed was like, who are you, right? So we went back and we explained ourselves. And the first thing that happened is they fell in love with us. They're like, oh my God, you're going to save us all this money because we're going to reuse the old product, you know, not to make the new ones.

13:42But they were also confused. They're like, wait a second, you know, we don't, you're not a customer, you know, we can't regulate you. And you know, how do we benefit? You're going to save us all this money over time. And I'm like, you don't have to do anything. You built the resource, right? We've aligned our self-interest as a company with your interest as the Fed. So the more coins you recycle, the happier you get to be. And that was a different thing. And they were super excited about the relationship between a business and government, right? Yeah, most government contractors don't say what you said, Jens.

14:12Well, this is really different. So we're not talking about government contract. We're talking about alignment. Of course, right. So continuing the story on, it was great for us. And, you know, Fed's happy. A year later, I get a call from the Bank of England and the Royal Mint, and they're like, hey, we were just talking to the Fed and you're saving the US government all this money. Will you come do the same thing in the UK? And I'm like, I'd be happy to. So I flew over, met them, and they're like, this is great. We love it. Come do the same thing for us. And I'm like, well, I need to talk to the supermarkets.

14:41I need Tesco and Sainsbury and Asda. And, you know, it took me forever to get those contacts in the U.S. The U.K. government set them all up that week, and we rolled out a thousand machines in six months. And the punchline is, I like to say that my private sector shareholders got a higher, faster, better ROI because we had a public sector benefit. So it was a win for government and it was a win for Coinstar. So that was sort of my first lesson. You can actually design business models for a for-profit company that are better because you actually work with government resources. So that's kind of a little public comment, right?

15:14And on the social sector side, the story I tell is I also got a call from UNICEF. And I don't know if you remember at Halloween, UNICEF has this program called Trick or Treat for UNICEF, these little orange boxes and teenagers will often collect coins. Well, coins and charity have a long history, which I knew about. And they said, hey, you've got thousands of coin counting machines out in supermarkets. We have this really cool branded program called Trick or Treat for UNICEF. But we have two problems. The first of which is half the kids never send us the money. And we're like, they're not bad kids.

15:47They just forgot to send it in. And the other half send them like hundreds of thousands of little orange boxes. So I'm like, we are mission built for you. Just put a message on the back of that little orange box that says, hey, kids, take your your coins down to your donation coins down to the local supermarket to the Coinstar machine, punch in a four-digit code. We cut our fee in half and wire transferred the funds to them. So it was their UNICEF fundraising went way up, right? And their cost of fundraising went way down. And I tell the story because that was a win too. It was great for UNICEF, right?

16:19But it was also great for Coinstar as a business because we needed trial and usage. So UNICEF acted essentially a customer acquisition strategy for us. So I just tell that story because the design of the for-profit Coinstar business model leveraged resources from government, leveraged resources for social sector, leveraged resources from private sector-like supermarkets, and made this much stronger, much more sustainable model that embedded purpose into it. And I really, that was a big deal for me in the 90s and throughout my 30s, building that out. So that's what I mean by a tri-sector model.

16:53Well, so how do you then facilitate or how are you inspiring? I mean, obviously you do a lot of speaking, but how is New Impact making or inspiring that tri-sector work today? So let me jump fast forward. So New Impact, we are a 501c3 public good and we focus on business model innovation. So for your listeners, for your entrepreneurs, we have tons of resources, free tools on the website. And our point is you can build a better, stronger, more valuable business if you adopt this different way of thinking, right? Using the way of like, you know, I'll ask you what your social sector strategy is, your government sector strategy is.

17:33And we find that entrepreneurs and innovators aren't trained to look for these sort of models, but once they see it, they can't unsee it. So what we're doing at New Impact is we're teaching this mindset. It's being taught at accelerators and universities, and we can talk about that. We're also tool builders, so we have free tools on the site. There's a new AI tool, which we really like. There's a tri-sector business model innovation canvas, which are all free to download. But for any one of your users, they can just go use the AI tool for 10 minutes, like here's what I do, you know, show me if there's any cool government resources at the federal level or city, county, or state, or any social things that I might be able to borrow to help me find customers or build new markets or build competitive advantage, any of the standard things out there.

18:18And we have a whole methodology and approach, which is starting to be taught now in universities as part of core business curriculum. Yeah, your website with those resources, you do. You have a lot of great resources. They're all free. It's at newimpact.care. and then you just click on the link that says free TSI tools to be able to access that. Speaking of AI, I know that that's something that you are, as of when we're recording this, I think you just spoke on this about how AI can influence and improve this work of, you know, if you're a founder, you're a business leader, you're participating in the economy and you can.

19:03And, you know, I remember my wife and I got to attend the one taping of the Oprah show when we lived up in the Midwest. And Bono and Alicia Keys were there and they were talking about Project Red, you know, which, you know, they developed this, you know, like phone manufacturers. They would develop a particular color. They would do red and you'd buy it and money would go to charity. And, you know, it's like so it's like it's judo. You know, you're using consumer demand and you're using profit motivation to easily do good, you know, while you're doing everything else. And it's just it's really takes it takes no sweat once you just put a little bit of force on it.

19:46It's actually it's just common sense. Right. But it's not yet common practice. And, you know, we tell we talk to innovators. We're like, hey, if you know, you've always got make or buy decisions about resources. Well, make sure when you're looking at resources, there's a lot of built resources already out in the world. And don't restrict yourself to only company resources. There's incredible resources in governments. We're particularly interested in government data sets. We think there's a lot of free public data sets that people can use. There's really interesting resources in the nonprofit sector, which often get overlooked.

20:16But why wouldn't you use what's already out there, what's already built, almost like little Lego bricks and hooking them up and building them, And then save your capital and time and energy for what's truly new and truly different. So there's a whole economic theory behind TSI business models and thinking. And I frankly, I think they are the gold standard of business models. I think this is where the world is moving. And I encourage everybody to start to think about their own organization, which is why we built the AI tool so they can get some quick ideas. Because you can be overwhelmed. Like, where do I find this cool government database?

20:50or where do I find a distribution system? And I could tell you 20 stories that we don't have time for with it. But that AI tool, which we started building a custom GPT, does all that work for you. It's actually thought about all the resources out there. So, hey, I need access to this or I need that. So if some of your listeners want to find a resource, just go use the tool, like no more landscape analysis. It's already done for you. It's all right here. We're very excited about it, as you can tell. So part of what inspired me for my last company, Savings Angel, we ended up facilitating millions and millions and millions of dollars worth of giving.

21:27During that taping of the Oprah show, Bono talked to the audience in between the segments. So this did not air, but he looked at the audience. He said, you know, someday in the future, it's my vision that we will all look at each other and we will look at problems like hunger and poverty. And we will ask ourselves, how did we let that go on so long? These are not impossible problems. solved. These are actually very easy problems. So it just simply requires everybody just doing a little bit. Talk about full circle atomic habits, right? It's consistently just doing a tiny little bit every single day.

22:12Then all of a sudden, these big catastrophic issues are resolved. I'm convinced. I mean, TSI, it's like human-centered design or agile. It's a methodology. It's a way of thinking. You can use it as a little company. You can use it if you're a Fortune 100. You can use it if you're a government agency or a nonprofit. It's about making things more effective and more efficient that's out there. I'm convinced that if we're going to solve some of these big societal problems, right, whether you pick affordable housing, nutrition, or health care, it's going to need the best resources from government and the best resources from nonprofit and the best resources from companies.

22:50But we don't, it's so obvious when I say that, right? But we don't build our organizations in a way that reflects that. And TSI is a way to essentially kind of unite the best resources we have out there. And what I'm excited by is that I have a little example with Coinstar that's been really good for government and good for the company and good for nonprofits, right? There's other companies out there that are revamping the food stamp system. I mean, at the federal level, we have 124 social safety net programs. Every single one of them is ripe for TSI innovation, for a company to be active with that.

23:26We can make government more effective. We can solve some of these problems. And I'm going, getting a little big picture here, but I really think it's critical. This is why at New Impact, I mean, I could have built another company or run a fund or something. But we're building this as a public good because we think it is so important and so useful. So you can also look at the website, whether you're an accelerator or an entrepreneur or an investor, this is a way to actually drive scaled solutions faster. And it honors profit, it honors mission and it honors duty. We're very into making sure the self-interests are actually front and center, which is often a controversial statement, by the way.

24:02But I think it's the only the way things are going to work. Yeah, yeah. Newimpact.care, Jens Molbeck, your founder, thank you so much for your time. This has been great. Thank you for the work that you're doing, making the world a better place. And I appreciate the time that you've spent with us today. Thanks, Josh. Great to talk with you.

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