Barrie Litzky

Transcript

“It’s Just Business” – Transcript

BARRIE LITZKY
I think that any entity that is allowed to prosper in a society also has to pay back that society.

MAURICE BAYNARD
Welcome to Drexel’s 10,000 Hours Podcast. Our goal is to mine the stories behind our region’s innovators, inventors, and thought creator. We’ll be talking to experts in subjects from fashion to neuroscience to find out where their passion for work and inspiration for ideas comes from. I’m your host Maurice Baynard.

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MAURICE
Barrie Litzky is an associate professor of entrepreneurship in the Drexel University’s Charles D. Close School of Entrepreneurship. A natural do-gooder, Barrie’s research focuses on topics like ethics and social entrepreneurship. And she’s always looking for ways the business can change the world for the better.

MAURICE
So we love the long and winding journey here at the 10,000. Where’d you grew up? What kind of kid were you?

BARRIE
I grew up in Annapolis, Maryland.

MAURICE
Famous for boats.

BARRIE
Famous for boats. Famous for crabs. It’s a really small town. Now it’s not a small, but it still has a really small town feel. And I was kind of a tomboy. Not like that I played boy sports and stuff like that, but I just I wasn’t interested in being really girly. I had a lot of friends that were boys. I didn’t shy away from that. And I was social.

MAURICE
What were you interested in as a kid?

BARRIE
Partying.

MAURICE
What kind of teenager were you?

BARRIE
Partying, Led Zeppelin. I loved music.

MAURICE
How’s the party scene in Annapolis?

BARRIE
And when I was a teenager, it was great, because the rock and roll was great. And there were these big open field parties and you know.

MAURICE
Where’d you go to college?

BARRIE
I went to Towson State University in Baltimore.

MAURICE
How did you choose Towson State.

BARRIE
My best friend was going there.

MAURICE
Good call.

BARRIE
I was not a studious student. I was really into just having a good time. I worked. I worked part time. I worked.

MAURICE
What were you doing?

BARRIE
I worked in like a t-shirt shop. In a tourist town, people come in and they want to have decals and you know. And a pizza place. And so I went to school and I worked and I hung out with my friends. And I just was like my friend said, I’m going to go to Towson. And I said, OK, I’ll go. I’ll go there.

MAURICE
What were you majoring in?

BARRIE
I majored in business because my parents told me if I majored in like I really always loved sociology and psychology in high school. I loved the social sciences. But my parents told me, and probably a counselor I think must have said this, if you major in something like that, you have to get a graduate degree to do anything, to have a career.

MAURICE
Right.

BARRIE
And I said, yuck. I’m never going to do that. So I majored in business, which I didn’t really like. But marketing was my concentration. And I kind of like that. It felt more creative. Yeah, so by default, that’s what I majored in. And then by default, I got an MBA because I started working for a company that was going to pay for it. And I thought, it’s the practical thing to do.

MAURICE
So I was going to ask.

BARRIE
Yeah.

MAURICE
So you graduate with this degree that you’re like, ah, college. What’s the first job you get with that degree?

BARRIE
Well, I worked as an assistant manager in a clothing store for three months. But then I got offered Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Maryland called. I had applied for a job there. And I got hired, and the job title was secretary three. And it was $14,400 a year, and it was benefits like sick benefits. And that’s where and then I left the lodge and I went there and that started my corporate career. And I had really good mentors there who gave me stretch assignments.

MAURICE
At what point did you say, OK, I’ll get this MBA? And was it just because you could get paid more money in that job?

BARRIE
I don’t think I realized it at the time.

MAURICE
Or bumped up to secretary two?

BARRIE
But I’m so goal oriented. I’m just goal. If I set my mind to something and then I achieve it, then I have to go to the next thing. I didn’t know until all those years later that really that’s what goal setting theory is. That’s really what people who are achievement motivated intrinsically, that’s what we do. We reach a goal and then we say, OK, what’s next? So I think, without thinking about it too much, that’s what happened. Like I was out of school. I was working full time. And I was kind of like, well, they’ll pay for your MBA here. And I don’t even remember what influenced me. Honest to God. I really don’t. I think it was like, well, it seems like it would be a smart thing to do. If the company I’m working for is going to pay for me to get a graduate degree, I might as well get one.

MAURICE
Right.

BARRIE
And that’s basically how it happened. And I pissed and moaned about it the entire 5 and 1/2 years it took me to the point where my mother kept saying, why don’t you just quit? No. I started it. I can’t quit. Who are you? You would never let me quit anything.

MAURICE
Right. What did you learn through that? I mean, now you teach graduate students.

BARRIE
Mm-hmm.

MAURICE
Right? And probably some of them are less than motivated to go on. What did you learn through that 5 and 1/2 years that you can share with other people?

BARRIE
I just think you have to find your passion. Study what you’re passionate about not what you think is practical. Because then, fast forward after that, and I still ended up going back to school to study behavioral science to get a PhD in behavioral science.

MAURICE
Hows that happen though? What decisions did you have to make?

BARRIE
It happened I came through the back door in the sense that I wasn’t somebody motivated by academic research. I was motivated by teaching. So my Blue Cross job eventually landed me into being a corporate trainer. And I did that for a while. And then I thought when I finished my MBA, I thought, hey, I wonder if Towson, my alma mater would hire me to teach at the undergraduate level? And I put in my resume, and they said sure. So as soon as I walked into the classroom, I thought, this is it. I found my home. And I was only 28. And I knew even then I was really lucky. I knew I was really lucky like, this is it. I found my home. And so then it became, what do I have to do to make a career out of this? Well, you have to get a PhD. And then I said, well, then I’m really going to study what I want to study, which is you know?

MAURICE
Right?

BARRIE
And Drexel offered me. I got into Drexel. So I came to Drexel, and it ended up being a great place for me.

MAURICE
Excellent. OK, let’s talk about social entrepreneurialism. Because I’m only going to get that out well one time.

BARRIE
OK.

MAURICE
That was it. OK, so talk a little bit about what constitutes social entrepreneurialism for those who that’s a new term or they don’t really understand what its focus is.

BARRIE
OK, so it means different things to different people. And academics can’t come up with one definition, because that’s just what we do.

MAURICE
Because they’re academics.

BARRIE
Because they’re academics and can’t agree on anything. But the bottom line is social entrepreneurs are the people who use innovative, often market-based tools and responses to solve social and environmental problems.

MAURICE
Mm-hmm. Can you give a good example?

BARRIE
OK, so a good example would be there are secondhand clothing stores that people can donate the clothing and then the clothing can get like upscale or up cycled. And then women who are coming maybe formerly incarcerated women who are going out on the workforce can go to these places and can get dressed and ready and also prepared for interviews, and there can be a resume writing, and that kind of a thing. And so, that would be one example.

MAURICE
Profit and–

BARRIE
Profit and social good. Some of them, some people only think of nonprofits as a social mission.

MAURICE
I was going to say this almost always seems like non-profit.

BARRIE
But they can be for profit also. So for example, Toms Shoes.

MAURICE
Yeah.

BARRIE
Toms Shoes, buy a pair, give a pair.

MAURICE
Right.

BARRIE
That’s a social venture.

MAURICE
United by Blue.

BARRIE
United by Blue, our local Philadelphia company. So that’s a social venture. They make money, and they clean the ocean. So yeah, that’s a great example here. And Philadelphia, actually, has a great, we have a great– I’m on the board of an organization called the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia. I think there are 700 member businesses. These are all businesses that strive to operate, that strive to measure the triple bottom line, so people, profit, planet.

MAURICE
Right.

BARRIE
Or in business terms would be economic profits, social output, and environmental output. And to measure those and to know what their output is and to try and manage that stuff. So this region is phenomenal for that. So I think that at a social entrepreneur, for me, is someone who’s very concerned with making sure that, in addition to making money, that their business or products are serving an entity that’s going to make someone’s life better. So I have a very broad definition. And some folks have a very narrow definition.

MAURICE
Do you see a world where that becomes the standard model? So we stop thinking just about the law of supply and demand, and you can’t even have a business. It’s not even thought of as a business unless you’re making the planet better in some way.

BARRIE
I think that in some point, maybe not in my lifetime. But what we’ve been calling social entrepreneurship for 20 years, maybe at some point in another 40 years, might just be called entrepreneurship.

MAURICE
Right. Or call it business.

BARRIE
Business.

MAURICE
It’s business.

BARRIE
Just or because even like at the Close School, we have three minors or three concentrations, social, corporate, and new venture. And even corporate innovations and even new ventures, I mean, social entrepreneurs can also have new ventures, create new ventures. And people who are majoring in new ventures and want to start a tech company can also have a social or environmental component to it.
So corporations can innovate in that space also. You know? I mean, god, if the big car companies, if the big three auto manufacturers in the ’70s had started making fuelless cars, then instead of, and I’m not making this up, hiring companies to do publish research that says that carbon monoxide is not bad for the environment and lobbying against it, how different would our world be? How different would our country be?

MAURICE
We’d all have electric cars.

BARRIE
We’d all have electric cars, for one thing. And guess what? Big trucks could be electric too.

MAURICE
Right.

BARRIE
They would have figured it out long before now. And it would have become affordable long before now.

MAURICE
Do you, like me, get the feeling that if we put enough effort into it, we can figure it all out? I mean, if you can get to the moon with like duct tape and plastic, then we certainly can figure out how to desalinate water cheaply or how to build a battery that’ll create a truck?

BARRIE
And people are doing it. Like a lot of times, we’ll see things in emerging or developing economies or still more agrarian economies. And so, I think the lines are blurring. And that’s back to your question about, do I feel optimistic? I think that kids are interested in doing things that serve others in there. I mean, they can’t get away from knowing how bad the environment is. They were born into it. So I think they have a pretty good idea that they can also. And also, there are so many more examples now of companies that do well and still make a lot of money. You know? And even companies that are like B corporations or benefit corporations who are on the stock exchange that had IPOs. So I think there’s examples out there. And yeah, maybe one day, it’ll just be commerce.

MAURICE
So if a future president names you head of business here in the country, that probably already exists. I just don’t know what you call that secretary.

BARRIE
Yeah.

MAURICE
What’s the first thing you–

BARRIE
It’s probably secretary of commerce.

MAURICE
Probably. What’s the first thing you’d deploy?

BARRIE
Oh boy. That’s a really hard question. I think because there are so many business regulations that were put in place like in the 1930s through the 1960s or even the ’70s that I think have largely been ignored like anti-trust legislation.

MAURICE
Right.

BARRIE
I think the first thing I would do is say, all the laws that are on the books, does the law still make sense?

MAURICE
Right.

BARRIE
And are the corporations abiding by it? And I would say, no more lobbying. Nobody would, first of all, no president would ever ask me to do that, because they would think that my ideas were bad. And they probably are. But no lobbying, no special interests, none of that. Don’t try and buy and sell anything that you wouldn’t buy for your mother or your child. It’s you know?

MAURICE
Do you break up Twitter and Facebook?

BARRIE
I don’t know about breaking them up. But I know like Amazon, as much as I love it, it’s big. It’s big.

MAURICE
Right.

BARRIE
And the banks are big. They’re too big. They’re too big.

MAURICE
Amazon’s really big.

BARRIE
Amazon’s really big. I believe in local business. I believe in local. I’m a proponent of local economy. I try and buy things that are local.
So you’re willing to trade off sort of that amazing convenience of I tell you a book while we’re talking, and you can have it in two hours over at Whole Foods in a locker. I’m not always willing to trade. I mean, put it this way, I do both. But I try and make a conscious effort to support the shops in my neighborhood. I do do that. But the shops in my neighborhood probably don’t have that book. In which case, I will probably–

MAURICE
They probably don’t, right?

BARRIE
Yeah. I’ll order it on Amazon. Yeah. But yeah, I don’t think being that big is so I great. I think we just get away from things, important things.

MAURICE
What idea or concept are you really excited about right now?

BARRIE
I’m really excited about how small to medium sized local businesses can change their communities for the better. And I’ve been wanting to study that for a really long time.

MAURICE
Could you describe what’s a small or medium sized business?

BARRIE
OK, so like a mom and pop, could be like a mom and pop. Anything I would say local or regional. Right? So something that would be, so a Philadelphia company. Like a United by Blue. So something that’s here that’s concentrated in this area and the influence that they have on their immediate community.

MAURICE
Yeah.

BARRIE
So maybe I shouldn’t even quantify the size of the business. But those tend to be the ones that are here. Even if it’s a large company, their headquarters are here. They operate in communities elsewhere. I’m concerned about like sort of one community at a time and how those businesses influence policy and job opportunities and good environmental protection or advocacy. Look, all the big companies have foundations. And they all have things. American Express has 10,000 Small Businesses. And they have things that they can do, and that’s great. But I’m more interested in the smaller. I’m more interested in the businesses that you and I can know the people who run it, and we have access to the decision makers because either we see them in their shops or we eat in their restaurants or we see them at chamber meetings or something like that. Do you know what I mean?

MAURICE
I do.

BARRIE
And I’m just curious. And so because Philadelphia has this great region of all these really conscientious shop owners, business owners, we also have really deep poverty.

MAURICE
Yeah. Some of the deepest in the country.

BARRIE
Some of the deepest in the country. And we have one of the most sustainable business–

MAURICE
Ecosystems, yeah.

BARRIE
–local living economies in the country. And so, that dichotomy has been really interesting to me for a while. And I’ve been trying to focus on how to study it. And I think I may have found a way. And it’s not about how those businesses can help to alleviate poverty, which was the original way I wanted to frame it. But it’s what role they play in addressing issues of economic insecurity.
What’s the difference? Economic insecurity sounds like a fancy way of saying poverty. Poverty. I think poverty is about numbers and your income. Economic insecurity is more about where you’re going to get your money–

MAURICE
Right.

BARRIE
–what your opportunities are for supporting yourself.

MAURICE
Right.

BARRIE
So it’s more about seeing how the system is affected rather than the ultimate outcome.

MAURICE
Do you think people are becoming more and more economically insecure?

BARRIE
Oh, yeah.

MAURICE
Like I’m thinking about Uber drivers where, yes, if you get up every day and you drive for 10 hours, you might be able to pay your rent.

BARRIE
Yeah.

MAURICE
But if you stop one day or get in an accident, you’re essentially unemployed.

BARRIE
Yeah. Well, I mean, there’s this great publication called Broke in Philly, and it’s– I don’t want to get this wrong. It’s an amalgamation of journalistic pieces from maybe 20 publications in the area, the region, so including the Inquirer but a lot of other Philadelphia news outlets. And every week, they combine a series of articles that have been published that address economic insecurity.

MAURICE
Right.

BARRIE
And part of their project as journalists is trying to get their heads around trying to measure and see–

MAURICE
How do you measure?

BARRIE
–how do you, first of all, where are these pockets of economic insecurity? What are the causes? What are you and I? If I ask you, what does it mean to be broke? They’ve started doing some interviewing and things like that. And so, I may have the opportunity, colleagues and mine from Temple and I are hopefully going to be doing some stuff with them. And so, that’s helped frame my thinking a little bit. I just know studying poverty is like it’s an economic study, where I’m more interested in seeing how the people are. Yeah, how the people are affected. OK.

MAURICE
So let’s just talk a little bit about how you got into focusing on ethical business and when you realized this was something that was really important to you and you wanted to focus on it long term.

BARRIE
There was no like epiphany. It was more about being raised in a home where my parents were constantly reinforcing ideas about equity and justice. And I can remember like TV shows coming on or commercials and my mother going, sexism, or my father going, sexism. I remember them getting their consciousness woken by things that happened every single day that were really sort of not cool, not fair to women. And the same had to do with race. So I was raised in this really just this I just always knew what was right, what was socially just, and what was economically just. And I think just as an adult, first, I was really interested in studying individual behavior and what made individuals tick. But I don’t know. Just the fascination that I have that a business isn’t inherently bad or inherently good. It’s the people that make up these large institutions that just continually over and over and over and over again make bad decisions and that hurt people fascinated me with, first, feeling like, how is that possible that these people that get into these positions of power and they just keep screwing up even if their intentions initially were you know? It’s like that absolute power corrupts absolutely. But then it just kind of became like a moral outrage from so the way I was raised to you know what big business? Screw you. You have a moral obligation. You’re a participant in this society. You’re an entity in this society. And you have a moral obligation to make the world a better place. And so my mission became teaching business and entrepreneurship students that we all have that moral obligation.

MAURICE
It has been a real pleasure to talk to you this afternoon.

BARRIE
It’s been a pleasure to talk to you too really. It’s been fun.

MAURICE
Drexel’s 10,000 Hour Podcast is hosted by me, Maurice Baynard. Our producers are Sean Fitzpatrick and Nathan Barrett.
Drexel’s 10,000 Hours Podcast is powered by Drexel University online.
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