Making Social Impact Easy for Busy People with Nivi Achanta

[00:00:00] Sean Pritzkau: Hey, you're listening to episode 21 of We Can Do This and today's episode is with Nivi Achanta. Nivi is the founder and CEO of Soapbox Project, which is a community that makes social impact easy for busy people. And you may have causes that you can. A lot about, and you may listening to podcasts or read blogs and articles about these topics, but you may be frustrated that you don't know exactly what are the steps that you can do to actually make a difference.

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[00:00:37] Sean Pritzkau: Especially, if you live a busy, personal, or professional lifestyle, you may not really know how to build in time to even do some of these things and actually make a difference in these areas that you care about. That's exactly why Soapbox Project exists. And in this conversation, Nivi talks about how she got so box project started and what inspired her, how she jumped in and began to run soapbox.

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[00:01:04] Sean Pritzkau: Full time. And some of the challenges that she's met along the way, this is a really interesting conversation. So let's jump into this episode with Nivi Achanta.

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[00:01:30] Sean Pritzkau: All right. Hey there. And welcome to the podcast today. I am here with Nivi Achanta. Nivi is the founder and CEO of Soapbox Project, a community that makes social impact easy for busy people prior to soapbox. Accenture's NorCal disaster response program. After the 2018 campfire, she went on to lead a gender equality effort at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, creating a bite-size employee learning opportunities.

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[00:02:01] Sean Pritzkau: When she's not writing, speaking, and working on creating social justice, you can find her in Seattle. Books or trying to keep her plants alive. I feel that on a spiritual level, maybe a welcome to the podcast. 

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[00:02:16] Sean Pritzkau: Thank you so much, Sean. Happy to be here. 

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[00:02:18] Sean Pritzkau: Yeah. I'm excited to have you on we've connected over social media.

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[00:02:21] Sean Pritzkau: I was familiar with Soapbox Project for a little while and, and I saw that we were connected through or introduced to each other through Dale Wilkinson, who is a mutual friend. He's been on the podcast. And I'm really excited to talk with you so that it kind of gets started before you launched Soapbox Project.

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[00:02:38] Sean Pritzkau: I understand that you were in your previous role, right. Do you want to tell us a little bit about kind of what life looked like before starting. 

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[00:02:47] Nivi Achanta: Yeah. So I used to work at Accenture doing tech consulting from 27, 18 to 2020. And if you had asked me if I wanted to become an entrepreneur, I would have said a resounding no, I had no interest in starting a business.

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[00:03:03] Nivi Achanta: Owning a business or operating a business. I thought I would be fine chill in climbing the corporate ladder. But the big thing that I wanted to do during that ladder climbing is do some good in the world. And I didn't think that was such a difficult thing to ask for because actually when Accenture recruited me out of college, one of the things that drew me.

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[00:03:24] Nivi Achanta: To them is the people that I had interviewed with kept talking about the different opportunities that employees have to create a social impact. So I was like, okay, great. I have a decent salary. I live in, I was living in San Francisco at the time and the problems in the city are very obvious. So I could probably do something helpful while I'm working at Accenture.

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[00:03:49] Nivi Achanta: And I found out that that was not true. And I, maybe you and your listeners can relate to this, but it felt like researching how to make an impact was its own full-time job. Like I was spending hours and hours trying to figure out how am I, this privileged person that is struggling to figure out like how to channel the resources that I have.

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[00:04:09] Nivi Achanta: And it was, it was almost impossible. So I started Soapbox Project as a solution for myself as a consultant as a bit. Tech person. I was like, okay, I need to learn stuff about the world. Take action. So I don't feel depressed all the time. And that needs to be manageable because I don't know anything about climate change or social justice.

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[00:04:33] Nivi Achanta: So let's make this easy for like a basic tech person like me. So that's so bugs was just born as a side project and then. I guess this message resonated with a bunch of the blue people that I worked with at Accenture people that I would talk to about it for my clients. And so it kind of started growing from then.

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[00:04:52] Nivi Achanta: So yeah, it really didn't have much to do with my role as a tech consultant, but that was my career at Accenture was a really good way to meet people across different professions and see that we all kind of shared the same problem of wanting to make an impact, but not really knowing what to do or how to do.

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[00:05:10] Sean Pritzkau: So it sounds like you had a little bit a gloom in the sense of you wanting to be integrating purpose with what you're doing day to day and not really knowing when you did like how to find time with it. And then when you did find time, you weren't necessarily sure what to do and you kind of created the solution for yourself.

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[00:05:29] Sean Pritzkau: I love it. Exactly. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about, I mean, let's just jump right into it. Like you started this side project. Like tell us about that experience. Like, I'm assuming you need to figure out that you're figuring out the solution for yourself, but you need to figure out what does that look like?

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[00:05:47] Sean Pritzkau: I'm assuming you named and branded this and how did you kind of navigate this, that whole founding of a soapbox? 

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[00:05:54] Nivi Achanta: Yeah, so the super behind the scenes story is at the time. So, you know, back in 20 17, 20 18, The one to two years after the presidential election. And I think that's a time where a lot of us kind of woke up to, we need to create the solutions that we want to see in the world.

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[00:06:12] Nivi Achanta: And a lot of us, including myself, didn't know how to do that. And so at the time I wasn't as. Uh, where is the wrong word, but I wasn't, as I guess, passionate about fighting climate change specifically. And I add this array of different issues that I cared about solving healthcare, homelessness education.

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[00:06:34] Nivi Achanta: And the one that I felt the most passionate about was education. Because I had worked with kids for many summers as in a educational capacity. I'd been an instructor at a summer camp. All of these things like my life has just been filled with. Education related experiences. And one of my mentors was like, why don't you start a podcast?

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[00:06:57] Nivi Achanta: So I actually did that for a bit. And that's part of where the name Soapbox Project comes from. I was thinking about like, how do I reclaim my voice and help teachers reclaim theirs and. It was the whole thing that went on for maybe a year before I realized that this isn't the right format that I wanted it to be, because it wasn't very actionable.

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[00:07:17] Nivi Achanta: And I was having a great time interviewing people and learning more, but it continued to drive me into this circle of doom of, yeah, I'm just learning more and more and more and more about how everything in the world is screwed up and not, and not doing too much about it. And so I think it was around 2019 when soapbox.

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[00:07:38] Nivi Achanta: Like what you see today with the newsletter and the website and all of that stuff. And it just really clicked for me. You know, I think the idea first dawned on me after the 2018 campfire, which at the time was the most destructive fire in California history. And I had only been working at Accenture for a year and I'd only been in corporate America for a year.

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[00:08:00] Nivi Achanta: So I was basically like a baby to the workplace world, but. Despite my relative lack of experience, I was able to launch an entire disaster relief initiative. So that moment, that specific project of, you know, leading a team of eight getting budget from some of the top leaders in the company that made me realize that anyone has the power to do something, but you just have to keep following your idea Through to action. And then I realized like, okay, if I can do this as someone that's not an expert on disasters or environment or community or any of those things, that means every. Everyone has the power to do something similar. We just don't really understand the steps. And so that's kind of the evolution of why we now send bite-sized emails and we make it super actionable and approachable, and really like the main message that I want to communicate is we all really, really do have the power to change our communities, maybe the world.

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[00:09:02] Nivi Achanta: And it's just about finding the right levers and entry points to doing. 

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[00:09:06] Nivi Achanta: so 

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[00:09:06] Sean Pritzkau: Yeah. From what I understand about soapbox project, I love how it's empowering busy people. Right. Which I don't think anyone says that they're not busy people. Everyone's busy. A lot of us are really busy and you take this group of people and help them with bite sized steps that they can take on a daily basis or a weekly or monthly basis.

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[00:09:30] Sean Pritzkau: And, you know, coming together to make this collaborative effort for change. Give us like the idea of how soapbox project really does empower people through these bite-sized. 

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[00:09:41] Nivi Achanta: Yeah. So first let me tell you a little more about the format. So basically ever since we launched the newsletter in late 2019, I knew of a problem that me and a bunch of other people were experiencing is that newsletters are really starting to take off and they're great, but they kind of inundate your inbox with a whole lot of information that you can't keep up.

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[00:10:05] Nivi Achanta: with And so what I decided for soapbox is that I wanted to have a monthly topic and break that down over the four weeks of the month. So every Wednesday we basically have a different module and the journey goes, read, listen, act, and reflect. So basically the first Wednesday we send people an article and we summarize it the second week.

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[00:10:27] Nivi Achanta: It's a short podcast or a video. And we also summarize key takeaways. Third week is action, where it goes from here's stuff you can do in your home and your life to things like policy events that you can attend more high leverage stuff. And then the last week is just a reflect module where we kind of talk about the changes that we made, see things from a new perspective, stuff like that.

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[00:10:48] Nivi Achanta: So I settled on the. For two reasons. The first one is, it just felt like a natural way. The, I like to learn, you know, like different multimedia formats. And I just noticed that like my memory retention was improving. Once we split up a topic into approachable pieces. And then, then the second reason is like with the reflect module at the end, I think that provides a little dopamine hit.

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[00:11:14] Nivi Achanta: If you do your actions and then you can get shout outs and the newsletter, all sorts of other things. So the goal is to really create a positive cycle of change and some examples of, you know, the impact that we've made since we incorporated, we. Raised around $50,000 through our readers and our members for causes like CWI, which has compassion in world farming.

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[00:11:39] Nivi Achanta: They basically fight factory farming, the NAACP color of change. And so a lot of racial and climate justice non-profits as well as mutual aid groups. We did some grassroots organizing for COVID relief in India. So while I think the biggest winners. Seeing the culture of change that we've been able to cultivate among our readers.

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[00:12:00] Nivi Achanta: I get so many emails in my inbox that are like, I never knew this was a problem. And I never knew that I could play a role in solving it. You know, somebody the other day shared a win that she had by talking to her grandmother. Wasn't really a big climate change believer. And she showed her a picture of like NASA's resources that we shared, like an interactive, you know, here's how the world is changing.

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[00:12:24] Nivi Achanta: And just hearing stuff like that on how people's minds and actions are actually being changed as a cause of the newsletter really shows kind of the impact that soapbox can make. 

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[00:12:36] Sean Pritzkau: Yeah. Integrating change-making into where everyone already is, right? Like they're already in their podcast player. They're heard the end, YouTube.

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[00:12:45] Sean Pritzkau: They're already in their inbox. And I love how it's fostering this. Almost like this identity change of, I am someone who, you know, makes change happen day to day life. So you got this up and running and I understand that there was a point where you made a crew change where now this is your full-time work, right.

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[00:13:06] Sean Pritzkau: We're building this platform. You want to tell us a little bit about that? And I understand that you have a team that's built around you now and how did this kind of begin to really grow? And, uh, 

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[00:13:17] Nivi Achanta: so basically it wasn't entirely my choice. So I got laid off from my center a year ago in August or September, 2020.

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[00:13:27] Nivi Achanta: And so that actually made me. Decisions a lot easier. Cause I knew there was, there would be a point where I wanted to go full-time on soapbox. When I got laid off it wasn't making any money from. So it was kind of scary because I could feel that I was close to be able to, you know, monetize what we're doing enough to sustain myself, but we were not there yet by any means.

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[00:13:53] Nivi Achanta: And so the decision that I had to make is, do I find another job or do I give myself three months? That was arbitrary. But I was like, do I give myself three months to see. If this can work. And so I decided to stick it out and it was little bit scary at that point, we moved from SF to Seattle. So like everything changed in a matter of a month.

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[00:14:15] Nivi Achanta: And it was nearing the end of my three month deadline where I was like, okay, I don't know if this is working. Not that many people are signing up for it. I don't know if I should keep going with this full time, because I don't know how I'm going to keep making money. You know, by that time we got like two sponsorships, but it was, it wasn't anything big.

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[00:14:34] Nivi Achanta: And that December, December of 2020, surprisingly, we got this huge New York times profile and that like really tripled our subscriber account, got a bunch of people reaching out to want to be part of it. People were asking what they can do next after signing up for the newsletter. And so that big momentum boost was really what we needed to move to the next step.

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[00:14:58] Nivi Achanta: And so in January of this year, 2021, we launched events. And then in March we launched a formal membership community. And so, I mean, financially things are so hard as an entrepreneur. Like I think that's the hardest part for me is figuring out how to pay the bills, but. The direction feels correct in the speed feels correct to me.

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[00:15:19] Nivi Achanta: And it was just like a really positive signal that the New York times cared about what we were doing. And it led to so many people around the world being like, okay, this is what I've been looking for. I got so many emails that day. That was like, I have been trying to find something like this for a year, two years, whatever.

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[00:15:37] Nivi Achanta: And so. I think that feedback is really what kept me going and what empowered me to launch events and a membership community, which then led to more events and more fun, local action and all this other fun, magical stuff. 

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[00:15:51] Sean Pritzkau: Yeah. Yeah. I think thank you for sharing that, because that is so true. I imagine for so many people out there, maybe even listening today, who there are moments that kind of.

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[00:16:03] Sean Pritzkau: Become like a catalyst for jumping off and doing that thing that you want to do. But there's a little bit of a, maybe an anxiety around jumping off and doing that thing full time. But something like a layoff, you know, around COVID like so many people need job transitions, whether they want it to or not.

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[00:16:20] Sean Pritzkau: And there's so much there to embracing those moments and kind of taking a leap of faith in some ways and just jumping out and doing it. Then you have these experiences that, you know, in some ways you can help encourage or sometimes take you by surprise. Like, it sounds like the New York times feature and then you just hold on for the ride.

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[00:16:41] Sean Pritzkau: Yeah, 

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[00:16:41] Nivi Achanta: exactly. 

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[00:16:43] Sean Pritzkau: Yeah. So you shared a little bit like financially, I imagine, as a founder and building this, that is one of these challenges. What other challenges have you found in building your audience maybe related to sponsors and your membership program and things like. 

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[00:16:58] Nivi Achanta: This is its own podcast episode.

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[00:17:01] Nivi Achanta: I could talk about this for weeks. So let me try to pick a few. Okay. The first one is bots. This is the one that no one told me about is how many, but there has been so many times even today where I was like, oh wow, we got a hundred new subscribers to our newsletter in the past 10 minutes. And like 70 of them are bots and.

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[00:17:22] Nivi Achanta: You know, if you kind of look up like, how do you start a business? People are like, turn on double opt in and capture. And all of those things, sometimes the tips on the internet don't work and that's been. That's been a revelation for me, honestly, because I was like, how is the internet not solving my problem?

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[00:17:40] Nivi Achanta: So, yeah. Bots is the biggest annoyance that I've been dealing with since February, 2021. And there I can pretty confidently say there is no solution. Maybe like there's like a, you know, thousand dollar technology that I can get. So, I don't know how bigger, you know, our, our list is like almost like 5,000 subscribers.

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[00:18:02] Nivi Achanta: It's not, it's not a nor it's not like billions of people around the world. So I don't know if larger businesses just deal with this, or if there just is a fancy technology to minimize this irritation. But anyway, that's, that's one very, very non-glamorous 

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[00:18:20] Sean Pritzkau: challenge primarily. Uh, Company. And you're trying to engage with people that might not be people that's.

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[00:18:27] Sean Pritzkau: I can imagine 

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[00:18:27] Nivi Achanta: that is so frustrating. And it's like Mehta frustrating, because nobody told me, you know, I knew finances would be a problem. I knew growth would be a problem. Like there's a lot of things that are obstacles, but I kind of anticipated them. Bots is not one. So that's sucks. Another kind of like technology tangential thing.

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[00:18:50] Nivi Achanta: All of these costs. I think no code is great, no code technology and being able to spin things up, even if you don't have the technical skills, but I was not aware of how quickly these costs add up. You know, I'm paying like hundreds, if not a thousand or more in services every month. So the money that I make is not the money that I pocket.

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[00:19:14] Nivi Achanta: I think people don't understand that. And so a lot of people, like not a lot of people, actually, there's a few people that have written back with very rude comments to the newsletter and have changed their tone entirely when they realize it's one person just trying to figure things out. So those are, those are a couple of them.

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[00:19:33] Nivi Achanta: And then a more maybe relatable one is specifically with social impact businesses. It's hard to figure out for me what to measure, because we're not a nonprofit that's trying to raise X amount of money or volunteer X amount of time. What we're trying to do is move people along further in their journey of creating change.

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[00:19:59] Nivi Achanta: Not a very tangible thing. And so a lot of the metrics are being figured out as we grow, which can be weird if you're asking me as an investor, what's your KPI, what's your main north star metric. All of those jargony terms. And I like, I don't know. Seems to not be an acceptable answer, but I'm trying to lean into that.

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[00:20:20] Nivi Achanta: I'm trying to lean into the fact that it's okay to not know. And recently I discovered, like I don't really believe in the venture funding model. And so embracing not compromising is really tricky. And as a social enterprise, I think puts extra tricky because there's so many layers to it because you're trying to do good and you're trying to stay afloat.

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[00:20:41] Nivi Achanta: And you're trying to get people to know who you are. I think a lot of my brain power is like dedicated to trying to figure out the morals and ethics and values of. We're doing. And so that's kind of like a never-ending psychological, philosophical dream. 

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[00:21:01] Sean Pritzkau: Yeah. It's a lot for, I imagine the one person or like, you know, small team and just right there, you've talked about how your head is in the product, in the technology of what you're building.

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[00:21:14] Sean Pritzkau: And then it's in this audience size of marketing and building your audience. Monetization and how to figure out these financial peace, so much stuff there. What are some ways that you've over the past few years as you've built this, how have you been able to scale some of the things you're doing a little bit beyond yourself, acknowledging that you have like one person, like, is there any tools that you've used that are like, Hey, just by using this tool, it's helped me really do much more than I could just by myself.

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[00:21:48] Sean Pritzkau: Tapped into other people or partnerships. 

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[00:21:51] Nivi Achanta: Yeah. So first of all, so my team is a very unconventional team because they all have full-time jobs and they don't spend many hours per week on. So, so we all started this when it was a side project. And so for them, it remains a side project because, you know, I don't make enough money to pay myself payroll yet.

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[00:22:11] Nivi Achanta: So anyway, but they have been an instrumental part of. Having people to bounce ideas off of. I don't believe that people should try to do entrepreneurship alone. Like I think there's this kind of masochistic glory in being a solo founder, but I don't believe in it. I think the best ideas come from talking to other people.

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[00:22:31] Nivi Achanta: For example, my designer Malayna who has a full-time job and doesn't commit like, you know, 20, 40 hours per week on soapbox because she can't, she has still with her limited time. Really change the way that people can see our brand. Like it's just marvelous to me how we both were working on this together since 2019.

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[00:22:54] Nivi Achanta: And in the beginning, I was like giving her specific instructions on design and what we want to see in now, she basically runs our Instagram account and. I like, I look at some of the things she posts and I'm laughing out loud because she really gets the thing that we're trying to do of combining fun and social back then the memes that she finds are hilarious.

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[00:23:16] Nivi Achanta: And so having a team, whatever that means to you, I think that's really key because sometimes my other two team members, Bella and Sonia, they're not. You know, they're not always able to put in as much hours because for example, one of them works in consulting and she works way more than 40 hours a week on her main job.

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[00:23:33] Nivi Achanta: But we have weekly check-in calls. And so even if they're not doing anything else, other than showing up and giving me feedback and letting me talk, like we said, in the beginning, like processing verbally is a huge thing. So. I just think every single entrepreneur needs a team, whatever that means, whether it's an advisory board, whether it's an official team, whether it is you talking out loud to your pets and getting some sort of input back from them, like whatever that is, you need people.

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[00:24:00] Nivi Achanta: And so an extension of that is in March when we launched our membership community, that really confirmed to me that this is something that I want to do forever. Like seeing the way that you can use a community to. Empower other people be empowered by other people and share the work that you're doing through other people has just been incredible.

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[00:24:25] Nivi Achanta: Like seeing people get really excited by the events that we run and say, Hey, can I take this to my workplace? How do I do that? So we've started doing corporate events because people have asked for them. So those are two things like having a team, having some sort of community. In terms of tech tools. I love circle.

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[00:24:41] Nivi Achanta: That's where our community's hosted circles. Great. The circle community for circle users has amazing events held by Mathilde their community manager. I use bench for accounting, which is super pricey, but. Like that's a big burden taken off of my mind of what if the IRS catches me, because I don't know how to do accounting.

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[00:25:03] Nivi Achanta: So now someone else has to deal with that headache. And so I just, I think it's important to identify the things that you absolutely hate for me. That's accounting. You know, that that was like one of my biggest service investments. And then there's like the other no-code stuff that I'm sure people have told you time and time again, like Zapier air table.

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[00:25:23] Nivi Achanta: My whole life is on notion. So now I feel very confident in our project management cause notion kind of feels like it does it for you, even though it doesn't like, it just feels like your life is being managed by. So yeah, I think my top two favorite tools are notions. 

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[00:25:42] Sean Pritzkau: Nice. I love it. Yeah. Especially, you know, really running something that's lean any, you know, you wish you could bring out a whole team of a dozen people to help you, but that's not always possible.

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[00:25:55] Sean Pritzkau: I really love how you talked about how just look around and see who's around you, whether it is your community, whether it. Team members at any capacity, right? We've talked, we've done an episode on this podcast before, just about how I've personally found community and like people like my accountant and like my, my VA and some, uh, team members that I've like hired for projects and stuff that are not full-time employees, but they're subcontractors, but there's like this network of community that, you know, this leadership and this world is, can be really lonely.

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[00:26:26] Sean Pritzkau: Running all of these things by yourself. And this is the lean in those people. Cause they're always more, my experience has been they're more than willing to lend an ear and encourage you when you need them to need encouragement. And then often these tools can just feel like a little work force in themselves.

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[00:26:40] Sean Pritzkau: Sometimes if you get them dialed in appropriately. 

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[00:26:42] Nivi Achanta: Yeah. 

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[00:26:44] Sean Pritzkau: Very, very cool. I mean, as we start to wrap up, I'd love for you to share a little bit about like how. Listeners today, if they want to integrate this idea of social impact and they want to connect with ways to make some change happen themselves when it comes to climate racial justice, like some things we've talked about, how does soapbox project play in and how can they kind of jump in and tap into.

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[00:27:11] Nivi Achanta: So we have actually a lot of entrepreneurs in our community that happened by accident. But I think that it's easy, you know, a lot, a lot of our core audiences, people that are in corporations that can't do social impact as their main thing. But I noticed that a lot of entrepreneurs end up joining our membership community.

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[00:27:30] Nivi Achanta: It's like five bucks a month because it's a low cost high value community because we have. We have events, basically at least once a week. And a lot of those events are fireside chats with people you don't usually get access to where you don't really get to hear from an intimate setting. So for example, this past month, our last two fireside chat speakers were Sarah Olson and she's an indigenous food writer and she's releasing a cookbook later this year.

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[00:27:57] Nivi Achanta: We also heard from none the Jamee who works in ad tech and she basically fights white supremacy and disinformation and stuff through her two person team. And so you don't really get to hear a lot of these diverse perspectives in other communities. At least the ones that I'm part of, it's usually like super climate tech focused or super small business marketing focused.

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[00:28:19] Nivi Achanta: And I haven't really seen a lot of like truly diverse speakers that you can hear from and learn from as an entrepreneur. So that like for myself, that's been a really big value that I am getting out of the community. And that's what I've been hearing from a lot of people that are social entrepreneurs.

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[00:28:37] Nivi Achanta: So I think that's like the main thing that soapbox has started to offer through the membership community. Making the connections that you want to make to activate your unique value. And I know that's like, sounds really vague, but as I was saying in the beginning with obstacles, it's, I am still learning and trying to figure out how to measure this because more than other communities, we want to emphasize that everyone that's joining is human.

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[00:29:04] Nivi Achanta: You have your own angle for social change, whether that's your business, whether that's at your workplace, whether that's. As a teacher or as a parent. And I don't know the one size fits all solution, but because I don't know that I'm really, really motivated to find speakers from all corners of the world, in all corners of different professions, whether that's agriculture or climate tech or, you know, things just really across the board.

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[00:29:31] Nivi Achanta: So that's really how soapbox has been helpful to our randomly growing entrepreneurs, sub community. In 

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[00:29:38] Sean Pritzkau: the beginning, you shared a bit about how you kind of design soapbox project around the need that you had. And it's really encouraging. And I love hearing that the community that you've built there is something that is still meeting that need for you, right?

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[00:29:53] Sean Pritzkau: Like in your circle community with these entrepreneurs and these speakers and things. It's great that you're able to run something that a, you, you have already sort of identified that I really want to do this for a long time. B it's something that you're actually benefiting from the more time you put into it as well.

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[00:30:09] Sean Pritzkau: Yeah. 

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[00:30:10] Nivi Achanta: Yeah. The community is the biggest reason that I haven't given up on soapbox. When we launched in March, I was like, nobody's signing up if this doesn't go well for the next 30 days, I'm just going to shut it down and it wasn't going amazing. But I was like, okay, fine, two more weeks. And it just started like, The thing that you have to realize about communities is that it's slow.

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[00:30:32] Nivi Achanta: And that's not a bad thing. Like if you're like me and you grew up in Silicon valley, I think that whether you try or not, you're kind of obsessed with this idea of everything has to be fast. $1 million in revenue every month. And that isn't. Yeah. And those are not like when I sat down and thought about it, those are not my priorities.

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[00:30:52] Nivi Achanta: That is not indicative of the change that I want to be making. So once I kind of got that narrative out of the way, for example, in may we launched the fireside chats in June, I think we started doing local events in cities, around the world. And that has been such a game changer to gather people and host events that are fun.

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[00:31:15] Nivi Achanta: And action oriented is like, Just really, really bringing this idea to life on how do we make everyone a change maker, even if you don't call yourself an activist, even if you don't think of yourself as someone that you can make change in your community, like you absolutely can. And it doesn't have to be a big deal and it can be fun and you can do it on the weekend.

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[00:31:36] Nivi Achanta: Okay. For example in Seattle, we painted for a nonprofit is like, what does that call? Like paint and sip, but paint and social impact. So yeah, just really showing people that this is a new, I mean, maybe it's not a new way of doing things, but it hasn't really been a prioritized way of doing things in the mainstream.

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[00:31:54] Nivi Achanta: So just want to bring back this aspect of service can be high impact and also really fun. And also. You are absolutely part of the solution. Yeah. 

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[00:32:04] Sean Pritzkau: I love the emphasis on farm. I especially do. And I mean, I love it. I mean, in terms of the. People that are jumping on board first are tend to be your early adopters.

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[00:32:15] Sean Pritzkau: Right. And it can be discouraging when you don't have the volume. Right. Of, you're not hundreds people aren't joining all the time, but when you have this initial group, like you said, I mean, I imagine you can learn so much from them too, because the people that are leaning in are probably the people that are believing in you the most.

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[00:32:32] Sean Pritzkau: And I see a lot of events of that. Well, so cool. So before we wrap up, is there anything else that you want to share with us? 

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[00:32:39] Nivi Achanta: I think the biggest thing that we haven't really discussed, I kind of alluded to is the success of soapbox has really hinged on the diversity of our members. And there's always new ways to think of that, right?

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[00:32:52] Nivi Achanta: Like ethnic, cultural, racial, sexual orientation, age is one, that's like a newer piece of feedback that I've received. It is because our members were representing a diverse group of people from day one. And some people find that hard to do. And honestly, I wasn't really intending to do it, but it's just because my like, network that I've been building and the content that I've been covering.

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[00:33:18] Nivi Achanta: We really talk about climate change and social justice in different areas. And so I think that appeals to a more diverse group of people. And I, I just really think that if you're not doing something that represents multiple perspectives, it's not worth doing because you're not going to find a high impact solution.

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[00:33:36] Nivi Achanta: And so I think this is a very under talked about subject within community building. And it's usually talked about as more of like a check box C factor. The beauty of our speakers and our events and the type of impact that we made could not have happened if we were only representing one type of person's perspective.

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[00:33:57] Nivi Achanta: And so if anyone that's listening is thinking of starting a product or a community or a blog or something like it should be something that you're prioritizing. Otherwise it's not going to be as high impact or as special as you want it. Hmm. 

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[00:34:12] Sean Pritzkau: That's really good. Thanks for sharing that. Well, awesome. If people want to find we'll have links and stuff for soapbox, but if people want to like, keep up with you, what you're doing, what you're learning, what you're reading, maybe working people with.

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[00:34:25] Nivi Achanta: I am obnoxiously all over the internet. So you do not have to find me unless you want to hear my unfiltered thoughts. So let me just say that as a disclaimer, for anyone thinking about following me. On Twitter. My 2022 resolution is to stop fighting on the internet. So I will not wake up and choose violence.

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[00:34:47] Nivi Achanta: Someone commented. Okay. That means you have a good month and a half to do as many fights as you can, but I'm @niviachanta. That's just my first and last name. I'm @niviachanta everywhere. I think that my most human self is Twitter and I should probably find a way to tone that down, but until then, that's up for grabs 

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[00:35:06] Sean Pritzkau: I'm here for it.

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[00:35:09] Sean Pritzkau: Awesome. Well, Hey, thank you so much for taking some time to be on the podcast today. It was really great chatting with you and really loved the, you know, continue to see what you're doing with soapbox. 

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[00:35:18] Nivi Achanta: Yeah, of course. Thanks so much for having me, Sean really appreciate it. Of course.

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[00:35:37] Sean Pritzkau: Well, that was so fun to talk with. Nivi I love how she's making impact fun and through her newsletter and through her community online, she's actually getting people together online and even offline, and some of her local events, and she's helping people take these bite sized steps to make a real difference when it comes to climate and racial justice.

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[00:36:01] Sean Pritzkau: Now I hope this was helpful for you because like Nivi said, she was building a platform that solved a problem for someone like her. And she's particularly passionate about climate and racial justice, but you may have something that you're particularly passionate about. And maybe that can start out as a side project, right?

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[00:36:23] Sean Pritzkau: There are often people that have careers that don't allow them to actually engage with. Level that is impactful. And soapbox project began as just a way for her to really funnel some of that desire, creativity and passion into something that she cared about. And it ultimately led her to build this project full time.

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[00:36:47] Sean Pritzkau: So maybe that's something that you can consider what are ways that you can carve out some time. Build, maybe just a side project that makes a real difference in your life. Share it with people are similar to you and maybe they can go a bit farther than you would imagine it. So, thanks again for listening to this episode.

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[00:37:07] Sean Pritzkau: And if you like this conversation with Navy, definitely check soapbox project. And see what she's doing over there, and you can also follow her. All of the links are in the show notes. And if you liked this episode, definitely jump in to apple podcasts or iTunes and leave a review. It would really help us grow the reach of the podcast.

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[00:37:27] Sean Pritzkau: And if you want to reach out to me, you can find me at @seanpritzkau and I would love to hear about. You and what you were doing in the change that you're seeking to make. So feel free to write me a message or a DM on Twitter or Instagram. That tends to be where I am more often. But thanks again for listening to the podcast and I'll see you next week. .

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