What if the most powerful fundraising tool you have isn't your data? It could be a single five-second moment.

Great missions don't always speak for themselves. Social entrepreneurs are often sitting on compelling, real-world stories (the very reason they started their work) but struggle to translate that into messaging that actually moves people. Adam breaks down why that gap exists and what to do about it.

Drawing on Matthew Dicks' Storyworthy and Donald Miller's Building a StoryBrand, Adam walks through a practical framework for finding the emotional core of any story: a five-second moment of transformation. Once you know that moment, you know where your story ends and where it needs to begin. From there, it's about knowing your audience and placing them at the center of the journey, not yourself.

The conversation also gets into the unglamorous, everyday work of building a story practice: brain dumps, voice notes, and logging small moments before they disappear. And for organizations working with vulnerable populations, Adam addresses the ethics of capturing others' stories, including consent, anonymization, and fair compensation. Real-world examples from Hot Chicken Takeover and Goodwill illustrate what it looks like when impact is woven into the business model rather than bolted on as an afterthought.

Episode in a glance

00:00 The Power of Impact Storytelling

02:34 The five-second moment of transformation (Matthew Dicks)

03:31 Know your audience before you craft your story

04:04 The classroom example: one story, three different audiences

07:19 Placing your customer as the hero (Donald Miller)

10:08 Frameworks for Effective Storytelling

11:34 "Homework for Life" and capturing stories daily

12:36 Adam's brain dump system for social media content

15:42 Ethical storytelling with vulnerable populations

17:26 Hot Chicken Takeover: lead with product, not mission

18:32 Goodwill as a model for impact woven into the business

20:10 Ethical Storytelling and Practice

Resources Mentioned

• Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks
• Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller

What if every purchase you make is actually a vote for the kind of world you want to live in?

Most of us have heard the phrase "vote with your dollar," but David Gaines has spent years figuring out what that actually looks like in practice. Building on the foundation of his first book, Radical Business, David returns to dig into the consumer side of the equation with his upcoming release, Why We Buy and Why It Matters. The premise starts with a reframe: consumerism isn't the villain we've made it out to be. At its core, it's a celebration of humanity's interdependence, and reclaiming that idea might be one of the most powerful things we can do right now.

David walks through what it means to become a conscious consumer without requiring a higher income bracket or a complete lifestyle overhaul. The entry point is simpler than most people expect: slow down, peek behind the curtain, and find one brand whose values align with yours. Become a super fan. Then bring three to five people along for the ride. That's not idealism, he argues, it's how movements actually start.

The conversation also zooms out to the bigger picture, touching on the death of an extractive economy, the rise of an equitable one, and why David genuinely believes the next generation is positioned to make that shift happen faster than we think. With Why We Buy dropping November 10th, right between election day and Black Friday, the timing is anything but accidental.

02:14 What Radical Business set out to do

07:28 What conscious capitalism actually means

11:08 Redefining consumerism as fundamentally human

16:17 David's personal 30-day conscious consumption challenge

21:02 The Future of Conscious Consumerism

David Gaines is the founder and chief visionary of La Terza Coffee, a Cincinnati-based artisan roastery built on direct relationships with coffee producers around the world. A longtime social entrepreneur and former chair of the Social Enterprise Alliance, David is also a conscious business coach and the author of Radical Business: The Roots of Your Work and How It Can Change the World. He's currently finishing his second book, Why We Buy and Why It Matters, exploring how consumer choices can drive real change.

→ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daviddgaines/

→ Website: https://www.davidgaines.com/

→ La Terza Coffee: https://laterzacoffee.com/

What if "doing good" in business isn't a checkbox, but seven different relationships you're already part of, whether you realize it or not?

David didn't set out to become a coffee guy. He started as a business coach who got pulled into La Terza Coffee because his friend, a coffee expert with zero interest in the business side, needed help running the company he'd built. What David found was a business already wired for impact, built on relationships with coffee producers around the world and questions most companies never ask, like what actually counts as a living wage versus fair trade.

That question became an obsession. David started digging into what "good" really means for a business, and the answer turned out to be messier than he expected. A trip to a coffee farm in Honduras, watching a woman sort coffee cherries with what he can only describe as joy, gave him the framework he'd been missing: treat people the way you want to be treated. Not as a slogan, but as a lens for every relationship a business touches.

From that single idea, David built out what he calls the Seven Seeds, covering the supply chain, your team, your customers, your community, your competitors, the environment, and yourself. In this conversation, he walks through where each seed came from, why the team culture seed might be the one with the deepest impact, and why self care is often the hardest and most overlooked piece of the whole puzzle. It sets the stage for part two, where David turns the lens around and asks what it means to be a conscious consumer.

Episode in a glance

00:56 How David ended up running La Terza Coffee

05:34 Fair trade vs. living wage

12:06 Introducing the Seven Seeds framework

19:30 Advice for social entrepreneurs just getting started

23:22 Teaser: the next book on conscious consumerism

David Gaines is the founder and chief visionary of La Terza Coffee, a Cincinnati-based artisan roastery built on direct relationships with coffee producers around the world. A longtime social entrepreneur and former chair of the Social Enterprise Alliance, David is also a conscious business coach and the author of Radical Business: The Roots of Your Work and How It Can Change the World. He's currently finishing his second book, Why We Buy and Why It Matters, exploring how consumer choices can drive real change.

→ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daviddgaines/

→ Website: https://www.davidgaines.com

→ La Terza Coffee: https://laterzacoffee.com/