Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Nivi Achanta, CEO of Soapbox Project, located in Seattle, WA, USA.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
My business, Soapbox Project, makes it easy for busy people to create climate justice. We work primarily with zillennials who have corporate jobs. We make climate action joyful and simple for people who care. Through our community, courses, and events, we’re reducing the activation energy for people to create meaningful change!
Tell us about yourself
I started Soapbox because I realized that I wasn’t actually doing anything to turn my good intentions into actions. Throughout my life, I’d always talk about how I wanted to make things better — the planet, racial disparities, gender inequalities, the education system, healthcare — but once I joined a corporate job, I realized I wasn’t actually DOING anything about it.
Social and environmental change can be overwhelming, and the spaces I was trying to join felt really judgmental. I didn’t feel like I belonged, that I knew enough, that I was loud enough, or any of those “criteria” that seemed implied.
So I started Soapbox for people like me! In 2019, we started sending bite-sized climate action plans that break down a monthly issue into weekly modules that take less than 3 minutes to go through. We’ve covered everything from sustainable fashion to food to water privatization, and the positive input I get from thousands of readers helps me keep going.
The biggest motivation for continuing this work without burning out was launching our online community in March 2021. It’s been truly magical to bring people together, be honest about the emotions we’re facing as we navigate our overlapping crises, and take action together knowing that we’ve got each other. The best work is done in community with others, and I’m excited to keep experimenting with new ways to make our community more vibrant, warm, welcoming, and impactful.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
Launching our membership has been the best decision I’ve ever made. It has resulted in a few accomplishments that I’ll never forget. First of all, we’ve raised over $80,000 for environmental and social justice. This is a LOT of money for an organization led by one tiny person!
Secondly, one impact I’m proud of is our quarterly letter-writing to incarcerated people events. Since 2021, we’ve written over 1,000 letters to people in prisons, and we’ve changed the lives of our penpals on both sides. Our incarcerated friends have written to us saying that they finally feel a source of brightness, and attendees on the Soapbox side have had their entire perspectives changed on the US prison system.
Finally, a community wins: after two participants met for the first time on one of our virtual events, they met up in real life at a local bar!! Since Soapbox places a lot of emphasis on local action, this was the biggest signal to me that our community efforts are working! What bigger validation is there than someone actually making a real friend on a one-hour event?!
What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?
Financial struggles. Especially as a woman of color, this is very real to me — I’m seeing businesses run by white men getting 100x the publicity and funding, with way less actual traction. It’s a well-known fact that women, and people of color, only get a small amount of the funding pie, and we have to work to do better on this.
As we increase the diversity of business owners, we increase the diversity of problems we’re solving, and that’s a beautiful and necessary thing.
Additionally, on the financial struggle side, because I run a social impact business, I feel the constant moral squirminess of where my money comes from. It’s a whole exercise in mental gymnastics to actually even solve my financial struggles. One book that has helped me rethink money is Happy Money by Ken Honda.
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
- We do not live in a world where “Business as Usual” is a thing. As a business owner, you have the power to make the world better than you found it, and it’s your responsibility to do so. Every single business has a connection to impact; it’s just about finding and cultivating it.
- Take care of yourself. There is no business without you, in the early stages. (Read the book Rest — it’s a great guide that backs up this permission of taking care of yourself with scientific research.)
- Focus on the metrics that matter. When I first started Soapbox, I was feeling pressured by venture capitalists to grow my subscriber numbers at all costs. Looking back, this diluted the quality of our impact efforts, and I would have done better to focus on the actual humans affected by our business instead of vanity metrics.
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://www.soapboxproject.org/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/niviachanta/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/niviachanta
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niviachanta/
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solopreneur that you'd like to share, then email community@subkit.com; we'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
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