An inspiring afternoon

As part of my class on Social Entrepreneurship I had invited Andreas Heinecke to come and share his two decades of experience with Dialogue in the Dark with us. It was a wild guess, I had never met him, heard him, or seen him, and so I was even surprised to see one of the students make a poster with his face on it. But the odds were good, and I want to share in a few words what I learned from listening to him.

"I define succes as making something simple, reducing complexity" that is when it can spread to other countries, people, organisations.

Andreas started his first dialogue in the dark in his garage after having an encounter with a blind person who opened his eyes to all the prejudice that lived inside him. Upon starting his social enterprise, people blamed him for things as bad as "being in the dark is anti-humanity" which eventually led him to believe that "when everyone says it cannot work, that's the first guarantee that it can work."

But also, "only one out of a million people make their innovation work", so "stick with your idea, and never give up." Now, after 20 years, there are 100,000 copycats of dine in the dark, and other 'in the dark' experiences. After his initial bad feeling about that, he is now happy that more people are working towards a bigger social impact.

To become successful, he had to find people complimentary to himself, one of them being his wife who has been his left and right hand for all this time. In other words "it's about followership, forget leadership".

On finances, Andreas had a few radical ideas to share. He calls his company a "full profit company" meaning that all the profit will remain in the company. If franchises are not losing money, he tells them congratulations.  He as the CEO never gets more than 3 times the lowest income in the team. Dialogue in the Dark has had to stay very lean in order to survive.

Even after so much success, Andreas is still very humble. He reminds us "after every award, after every increase in numbers, we have to think if we are really doing the right thing". At any point we need prove of our work, show evidence of the impact, and be very self-critical. So far we have been growing the elephant, but we're at a point where we have to find another way to increase our impact.

And even if sometimes Andreas has thought about leaving DiD and enjoy a quiet time with his wife and family, he says that "being a social entrepreneur is a one-way thing. People have invested their belief and time in you, and I cannot leave. If I leave... It's just not possible."

"Our currency is people, not money"

"We change pain into laughter"

And at the end, in a beside: "do you think I confused them enough? I enjoy most when they're confused, that's when they learn"