Q and A with Making Good Author, Billy Parish

Making Good, released earlier this week, explores how the next generation is "searching for practical ways to succeed financially while also making positive changes in the world." We ask Billy Parish, co-author of Making Good (also authored by Dev Aujla) a few questions about how young changemakers are forging their own paths to success.

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Billy Parish is widely known as an innovative youth organizer, social entrepreneur, and champion of the emerging green economy. He co-founded the Energy Action Coalition, the largest youth advocacy organization in the world working on climate change issues, is co-founder and President of Solar Mosaic, a solar energy marketplace and serves on numerous non-profit and clean-tech boards. Parish lives in Oakland, California with his wife and daughters.

1) The next generation is often recognized as a group that is driven and determined to integrate both purpose and passion into their lives, jobs, families and life goals. Making Good comes at a critical time when many in the younger generation are trying to reconcile their desire to do good, but also to do well. Do you offer any advice or guidance for individuals on how to navigate this intersection?  

Choosing the right people to work with is the single biggest factor that will impact your success. You’re looking for a complementary skill set to your own, but also some core qualities: creativity, integrity, persistence, and passion. Make a list of the 10 people you most want to work with — friends, professors, leaders in a field you are excited about. Cultivate those relationships, vision together and see where opportunities arise.

2) In the synopsis for the book, you make the distinction that this guide for finding opportunities that can effect change and make money are not just for entrepreneurs or Fortune 500 companies. How do you see those who many not identify themselves as entrepreneurial leveraging the “opportunities” that you reference in your book? Do these labels or distinctions matter when it comes to success?

In chapter 8 of the book we look at 3 major pathways for building a career:

• Being an entrepreneur
• Being an intrapreneur (making change from within a company)
• Being a freelancer

It’s possible to be successful and make change in any of those roles, and frankly, entrepreneurship is risky, hard and just not what a lot of people these days want. We’ll need more social change oriented intrapreneurs and freelancers than ever. Existing companies and organizations have tremendous power, and people who can get those institutions to do the right thing can drive serious change. Independent workers already make up 30 percent of the nation’s workforce, and the number is growing every year. This sector includes freelancers, consultants, independent contractors, temps, part-timers, contingent employees, and the self-employed.

3) From the articles I’ve read in various publications that have profiled you, it is clear that you’ve created your own path in life to follow. What is your own personal definition of “success” – whether that be personally, professionally or otherwise?

The most direct way to answer that is to share my mantra: “I am part of the beloved community. Building a more just and sustainable world -- For my family, my community, and all of creation. I am ready to follow.  I am ready to lead. Nothing to it, but to do it.”

1. My definition of real success is recognizing your purpose and passion in life and then following through with the goals you set for yourself. Personally my goals this year are to: Be a great husband, dad and friend;
2. Introduce the first awesome solar investment with Solar Mosaic and make it available to millions; and
3. Release Making Good as a best seller.

4) We’ve seen polls such as Deloitte’s 2011 IMPACT survey show that Millennials care deeply about whether or not a company provides volunteer opportunities for employees. What role do you think skills-based volunteering can play for younger people who may be looking to fulfill this need for making good?  Alternatively, do you think it is important for companies and organizations to provide employees, and in particular younger employees, with the opportunity to volunteer or find pro-bono opportunities?

Yes, I think skills-based volunteering can play a huge role in helping young people find their purpose, and I also think it’s important for companies to offer volunteer and pro-bono opportunities outside of the workplace. Every job involves learning on the go, but as an unpaid intern you are going to have to know what you want to learn and to drive your own education. Interns are often under trained and overlooked so plan for it and leverage the fact that you are working for free to get what you want. If you know that if given access to the company’s internal workings you have the ability to learn everything you need, then working for free could be a great fit with your self-starter impulses. If you prefer to take direction, showing off your abilities through head-down work, you might be better off somewhere with more structure.

It’s also important to ask yourself another question: Will the position give you access to a whole new world of contacts or will you be meeting and spending your days with those you already know? If the job you are taking involves getting out there and meeting lots of people in your field, it could be worth it. You need to take a long term networking view as you never know who you are going to be working with during the next five, 10 or 15 years.
 

5) In addition to the book, you are launching a series of “missions” to help others “meet the right people, build the skills, and find the right opportunities.” The premise is that these missions can ultimately help individuals find the right job.  How do you operate these missions? Can anyone join in and participate?

For the last three years we have been doing the background research, interviews, focus groups and experiments in the process of writing Making Good. We have distilled best practices from the top leadership development programs and job search guides to help people through the barriers they face in seeking meaningful employment. The Making Good Missions is a 12 week program to help people find or create a job that does good. Starting in March, in conjunction with the launch of Making Good, those who sign up will get a weekly email with instructions for their mission. Each mission is designed to help people see the opportunities for employment today, connect with partners and allies, and hone the skills they need in order to make money and do good.
 

6) You have also made a number of investments in ideas that can not only make money, but also have the potential to change the world and you call them “experiments.” How do you select these group/projects and what have you learned from them to date? Can you share with us what your next experiment will be?

We are investing in a series of experiments that enable us to explore new ideas that help people make money and change the world. Currently we are working in partnership with Gameful offering a challenge to 15k game designers that want to do good. The Challenge is to create a game that both uncovers the invisible power structure of an office place, a community or an entire world and then makes it visible for all. We are also working with Net Impact, whose mission is to use their business skills to make positive social change, in order to create a series of missions that help these young graduates meet the right people, build the necessary skills and find the best opportunities to help them get jobs that make money and change the world.