Lauren Shuttleworth: How This Stationery Entrepreneur Educates Girls, Helps The Environment & Makes A Profit At The Same Time

Summary: [ <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/yaro/lauren-shuttleworth.mp3" target="_blank">Download MP3</a> | <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/yaro/lauren-shuttleworth.pdf" target="_blank">Transcript</a> | <a title="Subscribe in iTunes" href="http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/itunes" target="_blank">iTunes</a> | <a title="Yaro Starak on Soundcloud" href="https://soundcloud.com/yarostarak" target="_blank">Soundcloud</a> | <a href="http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/podcast/" target="_blank">Raw RSS</a> ] Like many entrepreneurs I've always had a strong urge to help other people, not just directly helping customers with my business, but in a broader social sense too. Donating to charities is great, but I've never felt as excited about it as actually running a business. I've often contemplated how to merge these two ideas - helping people like a charity does so you get a real sense of meaning and purpose behind your business, but also doing it for profit so you're personally motivated financially (and can pay yourself well!). For a long time I kept these two ideas separate, like church and state. Yes my business allows me to support charities, but the two projects were never closely linked. That was until I met Lauren Shuttleworth, the subject of today's EJ Podcast. Lauren introduced me to the world of "Social Enterprise", which successfully merges the two worlds of business and charity, achieving the objectives I see as important to an entrepreneur - profit and social good. Lauren’s business, <a href="https://wordswithheart.com/">Words With Heart</a>, creates eco-friendly stationery with an ever-present focus on empowering women and girls. Every product sold funds a certain amount of education days for women and girls and this is delivered by the charity partners Lauren has teamed up with. In Lauren’s case, her business runs as a for-profit enterprise. The business also helps to provide education to disadvantaged women and girls in the developing world whilst positively impacting the environment through using sustainable materials in its products and production methods. [Tweet "How Aussie Entrepreneur Lauren Shuttleworth Went After The Stationery Market #entrepreneur"] How Lauren Became A Force For Good Lauren began her journey as an entrepreneur in the online space in 2008 by selling jewellery to a wholesale market via three different group buying sites. As you will hear in the interview, Lauren came across this opportunity at a great time. It quickly became a very successful and lucrative first business, bringing in sales between $3,000 and $10,000 per campaign. However eventually her jewellery business closed down as bigger retailers jumped on board once they realized the potential of the internet for online sales. Lauren still didn’t know what her passion was and wasn’t quite sure what direction to go in. Life threw a curve ball at the end of 2011, when Lauren’s mother passed away very suddenly. She was left with the acute awareness that life is short and she needed to take time out just for herself. Thus began a life changing experience of overseas travel. Lauren’s inner search began by working with rescued elephants in Thailand and from there moved on to Kenya to volunteer at a school. It was here she learned first hand just how crucial it is for girls in particular to receive funding to continue their education. Lauren specifically remembers a little girl called Esther who was very bright, loved school and wanted to become a doctor. Esther’s orphanage said they could not pay for her to continue school, so Lauren paid for that year of fees, but was left with questions...What about next year's fees? What about all the other girls just like Esther? Using Passion To Fuel A Profitable Business Returning to Australia, Lauren knew she had found her passion and didn’t want to lose the valuable lessons she had learned from her time traveling.