363: Impact Investing That Elevates Global Consciousness with Charlie Hartwell

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How could you change the world if you had access to an impact investing collaborative?

CHarlie Hartwell

Charlie Hartwell is the Managing Partner of Bridge Builders Collaborative, a group of successful investors who have been investing in startup companies in the space of mental wellness, consciousness, and spirituality.

A Harvard Business School graduate, Charlie has served and led organizations in 14 different industries, including starting a nonprofit in the slums of Kenya in 1986 that has now served health care to several million patients.

He also founded the first for-profit expedition company in US History to promote the Bancroft Arnesen Expedition – a historical 17,000 mile crossing of Antarctica by two women who became the first to cross the continent on foot.

Now Charlie and his company are passionate about supporting the growth of a new movement around mental fitness, heart centered connection, consciousness evolution, and improved health care.

What We Discuss With Charlie Hartwell in This Episode

Criteria they look for to determine which startups to invest in
Helping founders prioritize both purpose and profit
Biggest obstacle startup entrepreneurs face and how to overcome it
Examples of global consciousness platforms they’ve invested in and why they work
How they help entrepreneurs measure impact and monetize their ideas
Words of wisdom for visionary entrepreneurs

Transcript Highlights

How Does Bridge Builders Collective determine Which Startups to Invest In?

We were the first to invest in these types of companies and early on we met a lot of people with really great intention and no business experience. They wanted more people to be meditating. They didn’t know how distribution systems worked and they didn’t know how to scale things. So it took a lot of effort to find businesses that could be successful but also leaders who not just start a business but could also bring that to scale.

When we look at a business, we look at impact first. We won’t look at anything that is not impact driven. So we look at that and then we look at the entrepreneur whether they are someone who has the vision, leadership, talent and experience to be able to scale something. And then you have to look at whether it can be scaled profitability. So it’s a bit of an art and a bit of science.

What is the Biggest Obstacle Seen in Startup Founders?

There’s no easy response to that. It’s all individual because each of us has our strengths and our limitations. Where one entrepreneur may be fantastic at building product, another is really amazing at marketing or has great financial skills. The question for us is whether they know their gifts and build a team of really good people around them to build upon their strengths and create a more holistic team.

One of the first things I look for – maybe because of the field we’re in – is, “What is the inner transformation that the entrepreneur has gone through, and how willing are they to continue to be on that journey?”

Our goal is to invest in companies that deepen the consciousness of humanity. So to us, the first question is has the entrepreneur done the inner work that they’re bringing out into the world.

For example, it’s pretty easy for someone from Silicon Valley to go to a meditation retreat, have their life changed in a weekend, say, “I know how to scale things, so now I want to bring this to everyone else!”

I can see that right away, and we quickly head for the exit, because if the entrepreneur hasn’t done the (inner) work, it won’t come through the platform. The energy that you’re in is the energy that you’re going to bring through technology.

So for entrepreneurs, are you willing to go as deep as you need to, and really find yourself and your purpose and passion? The more you do, the more it can impact other people.

What Startup Projects Charlie is Most Passionate About and Why

Almost all the companies we invest in are fun to work with because we do our job correctly in looking at a company. We won’t invest in anything that’s not fun.

I’m all about co-creating global movements and building revolutions. One company I see doing that is Insight Timer. If you look at meditation apps, there’s more meditations done on Insight Timer than all other meditation apps combined. It’s a platform of abundance where there are 8,000 teachers, teaching in 40 languages, on a platform with 19 million people who have downloaded it. There are 500,000 to 700,000 people using it every day.

So here’s a global conscious community actually meditating together, and as they’re doing that they are supporting teachers from around the world – both by helping the teachers to get their content out, but also now there are paid products on the app, and they split revenue 50/50 with teachers. And they build their audience of 19 million without having to spend any money on marketing.

It’s also free – there are 60,00 free meditations – but if you want some special features or you want to take courses you can pay to do that.

That’s really fun because when we’re doing our jobs right, we can co-create a global community of consciousness and at the same time create a great place to work for the team that works there, and as investors, it will be very abundant if all that happens. So I love that because it’s really good for everybody involved.

That’s a later stage company that we’ve been supporting for a few years, and that’s based out of Sydney. There’s another company based out of Toronto called True Love. It’s pretty cool when you get to invest in true love from my standpoint.

This is one of the leading female game designers in the world, who’s lead teams of 100s if not 1000s of game designers, who has launched Tru Luv. It’s hashtag is #selfcare.

All gaming is mostly based on a masculine model of fight or flight. Brie Code, the founder of Tru Luv, has built avatars and games that are about the feminine – about tend and befriend. So it’s not about getting you addicted and it’s not about winning, it’s about taking care of yourself.

She launched it in the App Store and there was 2 million downloads and Apple promoted it. It’s a really early stage company but it could revolutionize the whole gaming industry.

What is the Model to Monetize These Platforms?

Currently it’s about features. If you get a subscription, there are 200 courses that are on the platform from leading teachers around the world. They are like 10-day courses. You can bookmark things, and you can fast-forward things. That’s currently the way we are monetizing. That may change or shift over a period of time, but what we will always look at is (1) how do we provide free access to everyone and (2) how do we benefit teachers increasingly financially.

If we can create ways to help teachers make a living connecting with hundreds of thousands of people around the world, so they don’t have to travel as much or do individual sessions, then that’s awesome. They also just launched a live feature where they can connect with a live audience.

It will always be a shared revenue model, because we feel that the more we can create a sustainable income for them, the better everyone is going to do. And when you have a big enough audience, it doesn’t take that many people to help create a really good business.

So the typical meditation app, you’d have to give them your credit card to actually get on the app, you’d get 2 or 3, maybe 10 free pieces of content, and then you have to pay $60 a year. We believe that’s the wrong model. It’s driven by economics and not driven by passion or consciousness per se.

Because our model is quite different than that, it’s a much stickier model. People stay on longer, they use it longer, and they use it more every day so any kind of monetization we get, it’s going to be for a longer period of time because people are so loyal to the platform.

How Do You Keep the Heart-Centered Startup Entrepreneurs on Focus with Their Metrics?

Again it depends on the company. Our goal is not to get in the entrepreneurs way. Our goal is not to come in with our system and tell them that they need to impart our system. Our goal is to say, how can we empower you to achieve your objectives – and we are investing because we are in agreement with that. And then maybe to ask questions or to say, what metrics are you looking at and is that consistent with what you’re saying. What if you looked at this metric?

The goal that we have is to develop a trusting relationship where we’re actually partners in the business, and we’re adding tremendous value in multiple ways.

If we do our job up front and say that we believe in the mission of this company and we know that this company wants to create mental health solutions that scale to millions. Or one metric we could do up front is how are sales? But in order to do that, you really have to have the intentionality, and the mission, vision and purpose has to be baked in.

Another way to measure is pointing to, like with one of the platforms we’ve invested in, there are now 100 million people meditating that weren’t meditating 10 years ago.

Another way is saying, here’s what we want to impact, i.e. we want more people to be spending time focused on their inner self, or we want to help people with this condition.

Charlie’s Passion and What He’s Looking to Invest In

I’m a change agent so when I get involved to create global movements, that’s where I’m in my sweet spot and when flow happens.

We’ve spent 8 years looking at how to build mind-training and mindfulness. My wise wife, Maureen, who is my business partner and got me into this field, said to me, “Charlie, you’ve been investing for 8 years in the gateway drugs to higher levels of consciousness. That’s going to scale. It’s time to go deeper.”

So the things I’m looking to invest in are models that encourage people to go inward. Meditation helps you to go inward, not have so many thoughts, or to just be a little calmer. But it doesn’t necessarily get at the issues that cause suffering in the first place.

That’s different for different people. For me, that inner work is about the trauma of a childhood of growing up in a family that is not mentally well, but everyone thinks they are, and the destructive behaviors that happened early. To go to those places, and what are the stories that I told myself, or continue to tell myself, that’s based on conditioning from a long time ago? All that creates suffering.

So I’m looking for platforms that encourage people to connect deeply, have the willingness to do the hard work to remove what keeps them from being happy and fulfilled in their life, and then helps them to connect with other people. There’s not only an epidemic of mental health crisis, there’s an epidemic of loneliness that was happening before COVID, and it’s only gotten worse.

Normally doing this work is not just doing this work by yourself; it’s being supported by people that you trust, that love you so much that they won’t allow you to be less than yourself.

If we can help transform a system that is based currently on too many drugs prescribed by people who are sort of trying to fix something and get more to the root causes underneath all that so we don’t have that pain reoccurring, then not only will we create incredible impact in the world, we’ll also create massive businesses that are good for people.

What is the SHIFT-IT Institute?

My wife is passionate about transformation and I’ll just describe her as the wisdom of our family. She is the mystic, multi-dimensional being, and she’s also a psychotherapist, with a Masters in social work. She’s been trained in multiple modalities to facilitate healing.

She’s the wisdom and I’m the method. I bring things into third dimensional reality. So we work really well together. We each have our own unique gifts. Shift-It is our business.98% of what I do is as managing partner of Bridge Builders Collaborative. She’s a teacher, she’s on Insight Timer, and she also works 1:1 with clients. She advises not only our companies but others.

What are the Benefits of an Investor Collaborative?

We came together with a common mission. Many of them could have their family office go and look for deals that way. Instead what they said is, “If we combine our resources, passions, networks and business experience, and have someone like Charlie – a managing partner or as some might describe as the collaborative glue – how then can we make better decisions collaboratively? Also, how we do support the companies we invest in collaboratively?”

So having a collaborative, just works better for them and the companies, because they’re not so ego-based that they have to own everything or have it be themselves. They really enjoy the spirit of not only working together, but many of them sit on boards of the companies we invest in.

What Have We Not Talked About That Would Help The Visionary Entrepreneurs Listening?

I don’t think it’s going to come as a surprise to any visionary entrepreneur listening, but the question is, “How do you be on your zone of genius and then build teams and networks to support that?”

As an entrepreneur myself, I got trapped in this feeling that it needed to be about me. I learned over a period of time that the stuff I didn’t enjoy doing, there are people that love doing it. And not being at the top of the pyramid, but rather being at the bottom of the funnel; being the visionary and finding people to execute on that, keeping them aligned. You be the champion – the passionate one – to go talk to investors and customers, etc.

It’s kind of freeing to understand that it doesn’t have to be all about you. And, it can be a lonely place to be an entrepreneur.

One of the things I would encourage people to realize is that you’re not on this journey alone. Many times, you can go to your team for that, so it’s really important for those who are willing, to find networks of people that they can talk to and get things off their chest.

So get support. Again it’s a journey. What is being invited to transform within you, as you are on your journey? These experiences can create massive opportunities for change for you, if you have the willingness to go there.

Connect With Charlie Hartwell and Bridge Builders Collective

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How could you change the world if you had access to an impact investing collaborative?