Listening was the theme Monday night as an executive for TOMS Shoes held the attention of a few hundred high school and ASU students at the Polytechnic campus.
Candice Kislack, the chief strategy and mission officer for TOMS Shoes spoke to young entrepreneurs about pursuing their passions to make a difference in the world.
“The world evolves and if you listen to it … you can make a lot of money off of it, or you can help a lot of people, or you can do both,” Kislack said.
She spoke about listening as one of several crucial aspects for someone to become their own entrepreneur and transform an idea into reality.
TOMS Shoes, a for-profit company that provides a free pair of shoes to a child in need every time a pair is purchased, has partially been so successful because employees listen to what people need, she said.
“We have a saying at TOMS, ‘You have one mouth and two ears, use them in that order,’” she said.
Founder Blake Mycoskie originally started TOMS after a trip to Argentina where he noticed the children did not have shoes. Kislack said Mycoskie presented the idea to friends and family and the business spread from there.
Mycoskie’s One for One idea also spurred ASU geography junior Tyler Eltringham to develop his nonprofit organization OneShot in 2010, which is working to provide a meningitis vaccination to children in Africa for each vaccination given to a college student. He said OneShot provided $36,000 worth of free vaccines to incoming ASU freshmen in August.
Eltringham said one of the best moments was receiving a congratulatory postcard from Mycoskie about his organization.
“That single envelope set the pace for how OneShot moved forward in the future,” Eltringham said. “We knew that if the founder of a huge company like TOMS believed in us, then we could believe in ourselves.”
Kislack said it’s crucial to be passionate about your pursuits because it’s the only way others will join.
She asked the audience how often they felt they could do something better and was met with many shouts of agreement.
“If you’re not creating the next big ideas, someone else is going to,” she said.
Those big ideas don’t have to be purely for charity, though, she said. Kislack said Mycoskie developed TOMS as a for-profit company on purpose to create a more sustainable mechanism.
She said TOMS takes pride in its for-profit status because it enables them to support their employees and hire 10 to 30 interns per semester.
“It’s been so amazing to be a fast-growing company that can provide a good living wage and provide something to those in need at the same time,” Kislack said.
TOMS has also been able to add eyewear to their business through the longer lasting model, offering surgery, medical treatment or prescription eyewear to people in Nepal, Cambodia and Tibet when a U.S. buyer purchases TOMS sunglasses.
The idea of having a sustainable business that can continue providing resources to countries impressed food industry management freshman Raymond Quiban.
“To hear that they’re helping to sustain the local environment and economy, it’s cool to hear that because not a lot of American-based things are doing that,” Quiban said.
The One for One idea is a prospect that impressed other ASU entrepreneurs as well.
Mechanical engineering senior Peter Seymour, who created low-cost devices to monitor vital signs, said he was interested in using the same concept for his own company, Seymour Enterprises.
“What can sense an infant’s vitals here could sense anyone’s vitals in Africa,” Seymour said.
The spread of the idea shows that small contributions can make a huge impact, Kislack said. She said ideas certainly do not need to be new to be successful.
“Blake took a shoe that was already in existence for over 100 years and he just put a new spin to it,” she said. “He saw a need, he saw something that had been working for over 100 years, and he thought, I want to provide something that I see a void.”
As for the young entrepreneurs who worry about turning their ideas into a profitable business, Kislack said it merely requires real passion and it will form a life of its own from there.
Reach the reporter at sksmith9@asu.edu
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