For a long time, changing the world seemed like an enormous thing to me. Something requiring scale and strategy and a plan I didn’t have.
Last week the 2026 SEA Change finalists pitched what they had spent three months building. It turns out the thing is much smaller than I thought, and much more available.
SEA Change is a social impact accelerator running cohorts in central and northeast Ohio, North Carolina, and Denver. I mentored two of the central Ohio teams this year, and by the time they took the stage, I had spent enough hours with each of them to know how differently they had arrived.
Two Teams, Two Very Different Kinds of Help
Jasmine runs Pretty Talk, building programs that empower young people. She has been at it for years — real revenue, real customers, school districts already purchasing her programming. She came to SEA Change asking how to scale.
Working with a founder at that stage is a particular kind of joy, because you already know the thing isn’t a fantasy. She has a foundation, she’s testing new product ideas, and she’s looking at how to expand the revenue streams that already work.
It’s the difference between a blank block of clay and a rough shape.
With a blank block, the possibilities are endless, and that’s the problem. Choosing a direction takes enormous energy, and you spend most of your effort just deciding what you’re making. Once the rough shape is there, the work becomes refinement — what’s working, what needs adjusting, what to measure so you know whether you’re getting closer.
Braedon and Ashley from Frisch Family Farms were earlier in that shaping. They have mastered growing holistic and medicinal mushrooms, which is not a small thing, and they had been selling at farmers markets.
But they come from Asheville, Ohio, a town of about five thousand people. Market sales in a town that size were never going to sustain them, and selling into restaurants required an equipment upgrade.
So our work looked different. Less about direction, more about arithmetic. What does a capital expenditure actually return? What’s the path that gets there without breaking the business on the way?
The Part That Stayed With Me
The social impact side of Braedon and Ashley’s work is education and youth programming in that same small town, bringing opportunities to a place that doesn’t get many.
And here’s the detail I keep returning to: they partnered with Alison from Fort Buffalo, another social enterprise in Asheville, who runs a community space there.
I mentored Alison when she went through SEA Change a few years back.
The support you offered someone years ago becomes the ground another founder stands on. Nobody planned it. It just accumulated.
That partnership is a lot of why I care about this work. These are businesses generating a livelihood in a way that leaves the community better than they found it.
Starting any business is hard. Adding a social impact component adds a whole second set of constraints on top. Which means the support that shows up early, when the thing is still fragile, carries further than it seems like it should.
What Support Actually Looks Like
Support doesn’t have to be complicated. It rarely looks like a strategy.
It can be an introduction to the right person. A post saying what you actually like about someone’s business. Telling a friend who would love their product. Being a customer.
For me, it looks like running a mastermind where social entrepreneurs can be honest with each other about what they’re struggling with. I do that because I want to leave the world better than I found it.
Changing the world mostly means showing up to your ordinary life with compassion, following your curiosity, and participating in whatever way is actually right for you. And when you notice someone doing something wholesome, supporting them.
Do the Smallest Useful Thing
Congratulations to the 2026 SEA Change cohort, and to the newest batch of social entrepreneurs growing good things in central Ohio.
Here’s what I’d ask of you before you close this: think of one person you know who is building something worth building. Then do the smallest useful thing. Send the introduction. Write the post. Buy the thing.
And if you want somewhere to start, take a look at the recap from the 2026 SEA Change cohort. Tell me in the comments who inspired you most.
P.S. Who is your favorite social entrepreneur from the 2026 Central Ohio SEA Change Cohort… the one you’d tell a stranger about unprompted? Share below. Someone reading this may become their next customer.