Ed Mitzen, the CEO of Business for Good, explains how and why he’s giving back by funding businesses from marginalized entrepreneurs to push social change.

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Meet a One Percenter Paying it Forward to the Tune of Millions 

Business for good, a nonprofit focused on addressing the wealth gap in America is providing high potential entrepreneurs, the opportunities and support they need. Join me now to further explain how his company is inspiring social and economic change across local communities is a CEO of business for good ed, welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having me, Kristen. We're happy to have you. What exactly are you doing to try to help some of these entrepreneurs? Sure. So my wife and I started this foundation called Business For Good to try to address social and economic inequality. We piloted the program in Upstate New York in Albany, Schenectady Detroit and put about $30 million into this ecosystem to try to get people in marginalized communities up the income curve. The basic premise is that last year as a country we gave $500 billion to charity and yet the food pantries are still overflowing, the homeless shelters are overflowing. So our belief is that we're not going to solve these problems with more food pantries. We've got to get people up the income curve and the way to do that is through business. So we've been helping people of color entrepreneurs start or grow their own companies and give us some success cases. Sure. So we helped start the Albany Black Chamber of Commerce and bought a beautiful building for them so that they can do business out of that. Uh We helped uh uh uh a single mom who had a flower shop business. We helped her grow her business, triple her business by uh connecting her into an ecosystem. We helped two Black African American uh female attorneys start their own private practice. They were public defenders, great lawyers. We wanted to help them, they wanted to start their own private practice. So we, we gave them building resources capital and we provide mentorship, accounting, marketing and help them to flourish. Where is the funding coming from for your organization? So my wife and I back in 2020 sold a big piece of our company and we became one of the one percenters that everybody talks about. So we felt incredibly blessed. So we've been funding it ourselves at this point. And you know, we want to prove the model out before we go and ask other people to help donate. But it's been working plans to expand outside of sort of the Albany area. I think so. Yeah, I mean, we're piloting it here and we want to try to create almost a roadmap for people in other communities to do the same thing. So to get involved in the communities to help build these ecosystems and help people grow their companies. Um I had tremendous advantages when I was growing my business, my parents own their own home so I could borrow on a home equity loan. I had mentorship. I had great education. A lot of these folks in these communities don't have access to that and they don't have the networks. So what we're doing is providing that for them and, and making them help them. How long do you stick with these entrepreneurs on their journey? Yeah, it's a great question. So one of the things that we have to do is make sure that we don't just do it and then leave. So we make sure that we stay with them. We meet with them regularly. A lot of them want the mentorship that we provide and then we help them to drive business to one another. So I have friends in the, in the white business community that I can funnel to the lawyers and trying to create this ecosystem to help everybody go up, but we have to stay with them because otherwise, you know, we don't want them to fail. We owe it to them to make sure that we see it through. So how are interest rates impacting your ability to really back these entrepreneurs and their ability to start these businesses or do business in the way that they want? Yes, I wouldn't say interest rates have hurt. But what has is the cost of construction and all that because we've been doing a lot of economic development work and building buildings. And uh that's gotten way expensive compared to when we started three years ago. So that's been a challenge. Um, mortgage rates are obviously not very favorable right now. So that's been a challenge. But we're, we're, we're getting through it and in terms of where you want to see some of these entrepreneurs go over time. What are the goals? Yeah, the goals are to create generational wealth for them and get them to the point where they own their own homes. They uh you know, they, they have thriving businesses and they're creating wealth for their families. Um And, and we're seeing it working, uh which has been really great. We helped a black owned funeral parlor expand. We helped uh a soul food kitchen restaurant, opened up a second location. Um So it's been, we, we also bought a couple of restaurants. We gave the people good paying jobs, pay for their health care. And if we make any profit, we donate it to charity. So sort of that, Paul Newman, Newman's own model on a much smaller scale, how much capital has been put to work so far? About 30 million so far in the uh in the Albany capital region. And, and hopefully we'll continue to do more. The great thing is it's working. We're seeing these people raise up and make more money and address some of the social challenges that suddenly food insecurity goes away. Housing insecurity goes away. We just have to reach out. We try to say that we give people a hand up, not a handout. So in terms of inflation, that's obviously had an impact. As you mentioned, we still see inflation a little bit sticky and rates are still high. So in having these conversations with these entrepreneurs that you're backing it, how is that context being framed in the conversation for how they want to grow their business and the cycles that they might see in the economy over time. Right. Well, we're trying to teach them and show them the importance of cash flow monitoring and, and we've been funding a lot of this stuff for them so that the rates haven't really impacted them. But if we're working with a restaurant, making sure they're pricing the food properly because the cost of goods has gone up so much and making sure that they, you know, they're tight with labor laws and doing everything properly with payroll and things like that. It's been, it's been a blast. It's been the most rewarding thing we've ever done. We have a staff of about 25 people and it's been amazing. All right. Anything else on tap this year from your organization? You know, we're going to keep going. I mean, we've got a lot of businesses that were queued up to help and it's just, it's just been so much fun. We really appreciate it coming down here on a day when the stock markets new record high. So that's good or closer close. You're exactly right. Yes, about 400 points away. Thank you so much. That's Edson. We appreciate it. He's a CEO of business for good.