ÂWelcome. This is A Glimpse Inside. I’m Wendy Perrotti, and today we are wrapping up our series on the side gig explosion, with an absolute rock star. If you’re just getting started, maybe you’re hatching an idea for a side gig or a business, please get a pad and pen ready. You will want to take notes today. Sharon Rowe is the founder and CEO of Eco-Bags Products, a business she started in 1989. She’s considered a pioneer of the reusable bag movement, and using business as a force for good, to create culture and behavioral shifts. Her social mission based brand focuses on responsibly making sustainably sourced, durable, reusable goods. Sharon has been featured in TIME Magazine, Glamour, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Entrepreneur, and Forbes. Eco-Bags have been featured on Oprah, and are recognized and sold internationally. Sharon has spoken on social entrepreneurship to virtually every imaginable type of community. She’s spoken at Yale University, Sing Sing Correctional Facility, the Accelerator in Nairobi. Did I say that right, Sharon?
Yep.
Okay. The BK Fashion Accelerator in New York City, and most recently, to women entrepreneurs in Reykjavik, Iceland. Eco-Bags Products has received recognition as Best for the World by B Corporation for the past five years. Sharon has been honored with the Enterprising Woman Award, Women’s Economic Development Center Lillian Vernon award, as well as being named the Westchester Business Council Entrepreneur of the Year. She’s active with Social Venture Network, B Corporation, Women Presidents’ Organization, and the Westchester Collaborative Theater. It’s a mouthful Sharon, so many things-
I know. I’m sorry.
 But, wait, there’s more. She’s got a best selling book, The Magic of Tiny Business, which is amazing, and it has received accolades from Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc., and the Yale University Center for Public Service and Social Justice, among others. And here’s the thing, when I ordered an Amazon, my all-time favorite marketing guru, Seth Godin, reviewed her book and said, “This is a powerful book. Tiny is mighty. Sharon Rowe’s simple shift in thinking is a profound idea, precisely what we need to hear.” Needless to say, I am beyond excited to bring Sharon to all of you today. Welcome, Sharon.
Wow. That’s a lot.
It is.
Thank you. Thanks for inviting me. This is really cool. Thank you.
Yeah, I’m really happy to have you here, and we were chatting, you and I, about a week ago, when we were saying about how important this topic is right now, this topic of tiny business and social entrepreneurship. Would you tell our audience what you mean by a tiny business, and why it’s so important right now?
Sure. I’ll just grab from the title, The Magic of Tiny Business, because there’s magic in tiny, tiny as an alignment, how aligned you are with your core values, how aligned you are with what matters most, and using what matters most, your core values to lead you, to guide you. It’s your platform. Business is your platform, yes, and you start a business because you want to be profitable. There’s the economic aspects of a business, but there’s also the impact parts perspectives of a business, and you can use business as a force for good. You can be socially conscious with your business. You can be a responsible business. You can be a sustainable business.
These are all choices, these are all decisions that you make, as you go through the steps of running your business, and tiny is how you align what you want most with all of these decisions. So it’s not about size, right? It’s not about whether you’re big or small, you’ve got 500 employees or 20 employees, it’s about staying really, as closely as you can to your mission. And I say, as closely as you can, because sometimes you have to veer off the path a little, but you always have to come back home again to align yourself. And it may be the longer road, or it may be a zoom, bam to the moon kind of approach, but you’ll get where you’re going, and you’ll arrive more whole.
And I don’t know that I would’ve believed myself 30 years ago when I started this, because I started a business, Eco-Bags, to solve a really big problem, which was wasteful, single use plastic bags. At that point, there was no market, there was no conversation, I just thought this is a good idea. But somehow, because I had this one tiny idea and I was really passionate about it, and I was really passionate about how to execute the brand, in terms of sustainable and responsible sourcing, I struck a chord with the people that I interacted with.
And because I struck that chord, little, by little, by little, a movement was built. Actually two movements, not just the reusable bag movement, and I’m not saying I was the only one in it, but I was the first one out of the gate with a brand, at least that I knew of, because this was all pre-internet. So we didn’t all know what each other were doing. There could have been someone off in Oshkosh doing something, but we didn’t know each other, and I believe that a lot of ideas start in multiple places and then can come together. But in any case, I started with a mission-based brand to solve a problem, and I didn’t want to make a problem solving my problem, so I attached to that responsible sourcing and sustainable sourcing, before any of these things were tagged, like I said before, conscious business, social business, socially conscious business, mission-based business, business as a force for good, but look where we are now.
So with so many people looking to be in alignment with what their work is, tiny matters more than ever, and I think that’s why it resonates, because we want to contribute. I think basically, people are good. They want to contribute, they want to make things better, and how better can we create the change that we want to see, by being the change we want to see. It’s sort of lead by example, how’s that?
So true.
Reduce it to two things, lead by example, and do no harm.
Right on. And we’re going to take a really super short break here and come back to… I love the idea of didn’t want to make a problem while solving a problem, and there were a couple of things that popped into my head when I was reading the book about that, so I’d like to dive in with that, and how you started, and share your best practices with our audience, as soon as we get back from this super short break. In the meantime though, before we go can you share with our audience how they can find out more about Eco-Bags, or the book, you? How can they get in touch?
Sure. Well, Eco-Bags is easy. ecobags.com. We’re on the internet, on Instagram, amazing pictures. Me, Sharon Rowe, SharonRowe.com. You can find out all about me, and the book is on my website, but you can also find the book at Berrett-Koehler Publishers, or on Amazon, or on Barnes & Noble, or whoever… Does Barnes & Noble still exist? Gosh. Okay. On any bookstore on the web. It’s moving so quickly, and I’d like to say that Berrett-Koehler, who’s my publisher, is all about connecting people and ideas, to create a world that works for all. So wherever you get the book, you just have to literally type it into Google, you’ll find it.
I love that. Tons of.
You can purchase it. Yeah. There’s so many ways to get it, and I want to add too that the book has cartoons, so don’t think that this is just another boring book that’s going to tell you what to do and how to do it. No, there’s humor in it, because I think business needs to have some levity. It can’t just be numbers.
Yeah, it’s absolutely not a boring book. And I listened to it, actually. And if I’m not mistaken, that is you that I was listening to.
That was me. I did voiceover work years ago in New York.
Yeah. So it is full of humor, it’s a great book, a lot of fun and packed, packed with information, The Magic of Tiny Business. Okay folks, stay with us. We will be right back.
Thank you.
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