00:00 I'm Josh Littlejohn, co-founder of Social Bite.
00:02 So I've written a book, it's called Paying It Forward,
00:05 and it's all about my story really with Social Bite
00:07 over the last, over 10 years.
00:09 The journey we've been on,
00:10 from founding a little cafe in Edinburgh
00:12 through to kind of a nationwide chain of cafes,
00:15 all the big sleeper events
00:16 that have raised millions of pounds,
00:18 the villages that we've built and are looking to build.
00:21 So it's kind of chronicles that journey,
00:22 and it's really a business book for people
00:24 that are maybe interested or passionate about social issues
00:27 and trying to use their own creativity
00:29 and their own kind of entrepreneurialism
00:31 to tackle issues that they care about.
00:33 So I try and draw out lots of different lessons and advice
00:36 and things I've learned along the way,
00:38 and to try and hopefully encourage and inspire
00:40 and give some advice to people
00:41 that may be interested in doing something similar.
00:43 I think ever since I was a teenager,
00:46 I became quite politicized
00:48 and quite interested in social issues.
00:50 My little brother won tickets
00:52 to go to Bob Geldof's Live 8 concert
00:55 when we were like 14, 15.
00:57 So that was a big kind of moment
00:58 of becoming aware of issues of poverty
01:00 and these kind of campaigns.
01:03 Bob Geldof actually wrote the forward for this book,
01:05 so which was just a huge honor for me,
01:07 'cause that was a big inspiration for me.
01:09 So since a teenager,
01:10 I was quite passionate about those kind of things.
01:12 And then later in life, when I left university
01:15 and decided to set up a business
01:16 and we ended up opening Social Bite,
01:18 and originally that was just a little cafe
01:20 in the center of Edinburgh,
01:21 when a young homeless man named Pete wandered in one day
01:24 and asked us if he could have a job,
01:26 we kind of thought, wow,
01:27 that'd be a good way to make an impact
01:29 and we gave him a job in the kitchen.
01:30 So that kind of became the little origin,
01:33 the little spark that started all with Social Bite
01:35 and kind of set us off on a very different path
01:37 than we would otherwise have gone on.
01:39 Social Bite has kind of grown arms and legs really
01:40 over the last 10 years.
01:42 It's a big charity now and a big social enterprise
01:46 embarking on a range of different initiatives
01:47 to tackle homelessness.
01:48 So first and foremost, we have the cafe.
01:50 So we're sat here in our new Glasgow cafe,
01:53 which opened several months ago.
01:55 So the idea is to try and offer a great coffee
01:58 and a great service to customers,
01:59 but also to integrate a social impact.
02:01 So homeless people are invited into this cafe every day
02:04 for breakfast and for lunch,
02:06 and they can get something for free
02:07 that customers donate in advance
02:09 for them to come and get something later.
02:11 And we also offer jobs behind the counter there
02:14 for people that are struggling with homelessness.
02:15 So that's the cafe model.
02:17 Over the years, we've developed
02:18 different fundraising initiatives,
02:21 big sleep outs were the most notable one,
02:23 where we've had tens of thousands of people
02:24 sleeping out in freezing cold conditions to raise money.
02:28 And then we've been able to invest some of that money
02:30 in housing-based projects.
02:32 And so the most notable of those
02:34 is probably the Social Bite Village,
02:36 where we built a small community in Edinburgh
02:39 for homeless people to come and live
02:40 and get lots of support.
02:42 And a big aspiration we have now
02:44 is to try and build two more villages,
02:46 one in the West of Scotland
02:48 and another in Dundee we're looking at as well.
02:51 So that's kind of two big projects on the horizon.
02:53 I think the big message I'd like people to take away
02:56 is if you are a young person maybe leaving university,
03:00 or maybe you're a bit of a serial entrepreneur
03:02 and you love setting up different business ventures,
03:04 then you can do that to proactively tackle
03:08 a social issue that you care about.
03:09 In our case, it so happened to be homelessness,
03:11 but we're not short of social challenges in the world.
03:14 There's 101 things that people really care about.
03:17 And the thing that I learned over 10 years ago
03:19 and really lit a fire within me
03:21 is that you can use a business format
03:23 and be entrepreneurial to tackle these social issues
03:25 that we all care about.
03:26 So I just really hope the book gives some inspiration
03:29 for anyone that's interested in channeling
03:31 those kind of motivations
03:33 to try and make a difference in their community.
03:35 I mean, I think the big thing that I learned
03:37 is that we probably have a lot of preconceptions
03:41 about homeless people and the issue of homelessness
03:43 and a lot of wrong ideas really
03:45 that maybe they've got addicted to drink or drugs
03:48 or they've somehow made bad decisions.
03:50 It's quite a stigmatized issue.
03:52 So I think that can be a big preconception.
03:54 Maybe I had that preconception
03:56 before we set up Social Bite,
03:57 but kind of what I learned is
03:59 that people from homeless backgrounds
04:01 typically got dealt really, really awful cards
04:04 when they were just babies brought into the world.
04:06 Maybe they suffered really bad trauma.
04:09 Maybe they grew up in the care system,
04:11 really got dealt very difficult cards.
04:13 And I could start to compare that to the cards I was dealt
04:15 and just realized how lucky I've been.
04:17 And that was a big motivating factor.
04:19 So I think that was the first thing
04:21 is just having more of a compassionate understanding
04:23 about some of the challenges people have overcome
04:26 just to kind of still be on their feet.
04:28 And the second thing is,
04:30 you know, everyone's got their own stories
04:31 and everyone's got such value.
04:35 And we've learned, you know, through offering jobs
04:38 through the cafes and across the things we've done.
04:41 Some of these guys have become some of our best employees
04:44 and become really good friends and so on and so forth.
04:46 So if you give people a chance,
04:48 then they can blossom and thrive
04:50 in the same way anyone can.
04:51 So it's just about trying to open that door
04:53 for people that might otherwise feel
04:54 kind of shut out in the cold.
04:56 Well, I write a bit about in the book how,
04:58 you know, it's easy to maybe think that
05:03 if we pay our taxes and we vote in an election,
05:06 then we've kind of discharged our duties as citizens
05:11 and it's over to the government
05:12 to try and solve the social issues we face.
05:14 But, you know, I think the sad reality is that
05:17 if we do, that's the view we take,
05:19 then these social issues just won't ever be solved
05:22 because the government is typically unable, really,
05:26 to solve these intractable social issues.
05:29 And I think if you look at the business world,
05:32 the private sector world,
05:33 the pace of change that's created is just off the scale
05:38 and it's so much quicker
05:39 than what the government can achieve.
05:40 So for example, I write in the book around,
05:42 over about 20 years ago,
05:45 there was no such thing as a smartphone.
05:47 So no one had a smartphone only 20 years ago.
05:50 Now, only 20 years later, like one generation,
05:54 78% of the world, I think it's 6.4 billion people
05:59 wandering around with a smartphone.
06:00 So if you think about the rate of that change over 20 years,
06:03 it's unfathomable.
06:04 So I suppose the argument of the book is
06:07 if we could harness a bit of that entrepreneurial energy
06:10 and that kind of vast change
06:12 that is created in the private sector
06:14 and start directing that to the social issues that we face,
06:17 then we could really start to address those challenges
06:19 much quicker.
06:20 So I basically think we shouldn't be so passive
06:22 to think, oh, it's the government's responsibility.
06:23 I think if we all take responsibility
06:26 a bit into our own hands
06:27 and know that we have the power and the capacity
06:28 to create change in our community,
06:30 then that's the way change will really be created.
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