For the 161st episode of The VentureFizz Podcast, I interviewed Liz Powers, Co-Founder & Chief Happiness Founder of ArtLifting.
It’s one thing to build a successful business, but it’s a whole different level if you can build a business out of doing good and creating better lives for others.
As you will hear in this podcast, Liz has a heart of gold and a do whatever it takes attitude to help others out in need. She has a history of volunteering and during her time at Harvard, Liz realized that there was an opportunity to help the less fortunate succeed through art.
This led Liz and her brother to pull together $4,000 from their personal savings to create ArtLifting. The company empowers artists living with homelessness or disabilities through the celebration and sale of their artwork. Its impact? Artists have earned over $1M from ArtLifting.
In this episode of our podcast, we cover:
- Liz’s experience and her background in volunteering for non-profits.
- The inspiration that ultimately led to the start of ArtLifting.
- All of the details on ArtLifting and the massive impact they are having on improving the lives of the homeless or disabled.
- How they raised capital from prominent investors, like the founder of TOMS Shoes, while building a social enterprise.
- The evolution of their business from a direct to consumer model to a more sustainable B2B focus.
- Advice for other founders around getting PR.
- And so much more.
The goal of this podcast is to tell a great story about an entrepreneur and how she built a successful social enterprise. However (Liz doesn’t even know that I am doing this), I would be remiss to not include a quick promo about ArtLifting. If you are moving into new office space or you are just looking to spruce up your office, go to ArtLifting.com for more information. Their customers include companies like Google, PayPal, LinkedIn, and many others. You can actually see their artwork on display from Rapid7’s Office Tour on VentureFizz.
You can listen to the podcast in the player below. To make sure you receive future episodes, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or SoundCloud. If you enjoyed our show, please consider writing us a 5-star review—it will definitely help us get the word out there!
Keith Cline is the Founder of VentureFizz. Follow him on Twitter: @kcline6.