073: Rebecca Fishman Lipsey (Radical Partners)

Rebecca Fishman Lipsey on Innovation City

You have to be willing to trust yourself, gamble on yourself, try things, fail publicly and graciously, and then learn from that. — Rebecca Fishman Lipsey

Welcome to Innovation City—powered by Venture Cafe—where Tyler Kelley and Michael Johnson, Co-Founders of SLAM! Agency, interview innovators, creators, and disruptors to discover how business is changing in the modern world.

Created and produced by SLAM! Agency in cooperation with Venture Cafe St. Louis and Venture Cafe Miami, Innovation City gives you an inside look at how rapidly business and culture are changing thanks to increasing diversity and inclusion, heightened creativity, and a stronger and better-connected business community. Venture Cafe is the largest combined gathering of entrepreneurs and innovators anywhere in the world. Events are held every Thursday in St. Louis, Miami, and other leading innovation cities around the globe.

Today’s guest is Rebecca Fishman Lipsey, Founder & CEO of Radical Partners. Radical Partners is an accelerator for social-impact ventures based in Miami, FL. Rebecca joins the Innovation City team to discuss why she started Radical Partners, how they are helping new ventures in Miami, starting projects to help ignite social change, the scarcity mindset in Miami, and how to think about what your business needs to look like to be successful. You can connect with Rebecca on Twitter and LinkedIn and with Radical Partners on their website, Facebook, and Twitter.

They discuss:

• Looking at the current issues Miami is facing
  • Sea level rise
  • Housing affordability
  • Educational equity
• Starting Radical Partners as way to start social change
• Looking for ways to leverage a collective voice of the community
• Helping new ventures get off the ground and grow to scale
• The 2 major problems Radical Partners has set out to solve:
  • Helping the leaders get their ideas to fruition
  • Helping the community get engaged in a meaningful and constructive way
• Projects that Rebecca loves:
  • 100 Great Ideas
    • The community shares their opinion about the best way to solve a pressing community issue. They synthesize the top 100 ideas to present to decision-makers in the community who have the ability to implement them.
  • Social Entrepreneurship Bootcamp
    • Along with a cohort of 10-12 local social impact leaders, the bootcamp assists in accelerating the impact of new ventures with a focus on sustainability and growth.
• Creating a trusting environment within the bootcamp to help entrepreneurs feel less alone
• The scarcity mindset in Miami
  • People feeling as though there is not enough funding and resources to go around
• Getting people to work together to tackle issues rather than having just on entity at a time working on an issue
• Trying to remove the scarcity mindset in Miami through reassurance and support
  • Working on creating a cohort of people who are all working on the same problem
  • Showing evidence of success through working together on issues
• Big ideas take multiple people to work on them…not just one person/entity
• The difference between being a $100K business and a $1mil business
  • $100K business are still figuring things out and working month-to-month
  • $1mil business should have set systems and a high-functioning team
• How to think about what your business needs to look like to be successful
  • What is the story you’re telling now, what is the story you need to tell 5 years from now, and what is your plan to get there?
• The importance of training and on-boarding your team
• Helping people think through the “why” behind their work and less about the “what”
• Self-imposed scarcity mindsets in leaderships
• Rebecca’s biggest problem she’s set out to solve:
  • Wanting to transform the way cities allow locals to help solve problems
  • Taking the biggest steps she can each year towards a solution
• Talking big picture about your goals and plans
• Atlanta, GA is adopting the 100 Great Ideas program
  • Any city is encouraged to participate- contact Radical Partners for more info
• Get in touch with Radical Partners on their website, Facebook, & Twitter