Creating Social Impact Across the Globe with Amber Runyon

Evan Holladay: Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of Monumental. I'm your host, Evan Holladay. Today's guest is making monumental social change. Her name is Amber Runyon and she's a hospice nurse turned social entrepreneur and she started Eleventh Candle Co out of the desire to bring hope to women both in the United States and in Ethiopia who've been vulnerable to human trafficking, abuse, exploitation and addiction. They focus on providing a therapeutic work setting that allows all women a fair chance and opportunity to grow. Today's episode you're going to hear how Amber's running a social enterprise company all the way from Columbus, Ohio and helping women from Ethiopia all the way back to the United States in Columbus. You're going to learn how you can create a daily regimen that works for your personality and your goals and how to light a flame under your business today by reaching out to CEO's of fortune 500 companies and learning from these CEO's. Quickly before we jump into the episode I wanted to thank all of our amazing listeners just like yourself and everybody listening today, just thank everybody for leaving us reviews and ratings. This really keeps us going and it gives us great feedback. Here's a five star review from Brig, Brig says, "Great podcast, very insightful and entertaining. Great job, Evan." Reviews like this are amazing, this is what keeps us going so thank you again and keep leaving us feedback. We love it. Now let's jump right in to this episode with Amber.

Amber, so glad to have you on the show today and thank you for joining us.

Amber Runyon: Thanks for taking the time, Evan.

Evan Holladay: Amber, let's jump right in and talk a little bit about why you started Legacy and Eleventh Candle Company.

Amber Runyon: Sure. Legacy is the non-profit and Eleven Candle Company is a for-profit social enterprise. I was a nurse and I traveled all over and doing some of the international and fell in love with a little girl over in Ethiopia and just kept going back to see her and one day witnessed two little girls being trafficked in broad daylight. Recognizing that that could be an issue for Mulu I began to dig around a little bit from what human trafficking is and that topic, and came back home and wanted to do something here too, searched what was Ohio's biggest issues and sure enough if it wasn't human trafficking. I decided that I didn't want to be a person that lived in a world where little boys and little girls could be bought and sold, so that's kind of a shortened version of how and why we got started.

Evan Holladay: You're based in Columbus, Ohio but you were on a mission trip when you saw this go down and when you saw the two kids being trafficked in broad daylight.

Amber Runyon: Yeah.

Evan Holladay: You saw the connection between the two and found a way that you could service here in the United States and abroad.

Amber Runyon: Yeah. Non-profit works overseas and helps take care of a club of women, under 16 women that we work with, it would be like micro financing loans with them, with their co-op, then we take care of kids through a foster care program. Then the non-profit here works on coaching, counseling and employment for the women that are in our program partnering with Eleventh Candle Company to provide that employment piece. When we look at human trafficking and where do we fall short as a city and as a state and as a country, where I saw that we fell short all three of those categories was employment. People need three things to thrive: Safe place, safe people and purpose so creating that purpose aspect through employment.

Evan Holladay: Between the co-op abroad, and where is the co-op?

Amber Runyon: It's over at Ethiopia.

Amber Runyon: Ethiopia, OK. With the co-op in Ethiopia and the Eleventh Candle Company and the women that you employ in the United States, is there any connection as far as the product, the candles and the different products that you all sell in the United States and the women and the co-ops in Ethiopia?

Amber Runyon: The women in the co-op in Ethiopia create products that are sourced inside of their own country. It's really hard to get an import-export license so we still haven't been able to nail that down to be able to bring their products back here so the women over at Ethiopia have created a marketplace where they can sell their products in their own country. Here in the states, the women at Eleventh are employed products are sold here, so the candles are manufactured here in Ohio and then we dispense to help support the co-op overseas so to provide micro-financing loans for like if somebody wants to put in a water pump to be able to start a laundry mat, that's one of our more successful stories. A woman wants to buy a sewing machine, then we help work with micro-financing so that they can create these opportunities for themselves and be able to carry those things out.

Evan Holladay: That's really great. Going back real quick, I noticed in other writings and your bio you had talked a lot about Mulu. Could you touch a little bit more about your relationship with her?

Amber Runyon: I was walking through a village and this little girl comes up and slips her little hand inside of mine and I had this insane sense of belonging and knew that in some way that she belonged to me and that I belonged to her and so that's what kept me going back to Ethiopia. In the last few years that story has taken a turn for the not so fun, a turn for the worse and that she - for lack of a better word - has been kidnapped and I'm not able to see her so it's been a year or so since I've seen her. That's the story that you don't ever want to tell because it's not really the way that it was supposed to go but what I recognized is that while this situation is what it is currently with Mulu and it may not always be this way but it could definitely always be this way is that there are lots and lots of Mulus all over this world both in my back yard and over in Ethiopia that desperately need somebody to fight for them.

Evan Holladay: Right, exactly. I'm sorry to hear that about Mulu.

Amber Runyon: It's definitely not the trapper that you want to tell. That's the interesting thing about life is that we don't always get to erase that part of life whether it's from your own mistakes or from something that's happened to you. Unfortunately, you just don't get to erase some of those.

Evan Holladay: You're exactly right. There are certain things that you can't always control and they may seem negative at the time and it's what you can do with that. I think through Mulu you can also be able to raise more concern for what's going on because it is such a big issue and there are so many children and women and individuals across the world that are being affected by human trafficking.

Amber Runyon: Yeah. Mulu's name in means to be made complete and I think it's been fascinating, in many ways she led me down that path in a journey to find my more complete self. I think what is even more fascinating is that the love of two people have literally changed the world for thousands of people. People think that you always have to do these great, big, monumental things to change the world but really what changes the world is just loving each other.

Evan Holladay: Exactly. As far as leading up to this point, do you think there's anything in your past or leading up to this moment that brought you to starting Legacy and Eleventh Candle Company?

Amber Runyon: I think there were a number of things. I think that's what's interesting about life is that we look at life as one pathway when really life is a bunch of different pathways and if you're open to it, it keeps leading you up different pathways. I was a foster care kid and so the odds are stacked against me. I always made this agreement with god, the universe, the world, whatever you want to call it that if I could get out the situation that I was in that I would give to those that were less fortunate than me so I think that the gap was what led me down that path. Then I was a hospice nurse and I watched people die every day and watching that and seeing some people leaving these huge, blasting legacies and knew that I wanted my life to be more than just when I was here. I wanted to leave this world a better place than it was and then through starting a social enterprise - and if you think that's easy work, it's not. Most people have went down that path, it is a dark, lonely, scary trying path and what that path led me down to was this place where I hit this rock bottom, where it felt like the world was on my shoulders and business was hard and all these other things. I reached a point where I recognized that I needed to take care of myself and that led me into this pretty intense counseling during which has lead me to a place where I recognize that our women desperately need the same thing that I was able to afford. There's so many people that can't afford therapy. There's people that won't talk about that all of us probably need therapy and so it's a different path that keeps leading you down different roads, so where I think some people get hung up is they refuse to look, "Oh, I can't get off this path because this is definitely the path that I'm supposed to be on." The beautiful thing is that you can be on all of them.

Evan Holladay: Exactly right. I think what you're saying about the path is not always clear and it's not always one path, it's an open mind and like you touched on, starting anything, a social enterprise, an entrepreneurial venture you're going to go to dark places, you're going to have to grind through it, you're going to have to really put your head down and stay true to what you want to do and eventually you'll get there but you have to go through the hard times and figure things out and make tough decisions.

Amber Runyon: I think that that's the thing too about change, is that there is no way to get, you can't go around it. Trust me, if there was a way to figure out a way to go around this, I tried. The true answer is going through it, is just falling down and going through it. For me what that meant was I had to go and take care of a bunch of junk from my past. How did I get myself right? If you show me a healthy organization there's going to be healthy leadership. If you show me an unhealthy organization you will see unhealthy leadership. I knew that if I wanted to have a healthy organization that I had to be healthy and I think a lot of times organizations and leaders, we put ourselves last and that doesn't serve us or the organization or the people that we're trying to serve.

Evan Holladay: What would you suggest to someone that is trying to figure that out and trying to make sure they themselves are healthy and happy and true to themselves.

Amber Runyon: Therapy. I think every single person should be in therapy but second to that, I hate this word but a self-care regimen. Self-care everybody thinks is a bubble bath and a manicure, it's not, but it's self-care regimen. For me, it was the wilderness. I did not recognize how much I needed to be outside and hiking and being in the wilderness and being in good therapy and working through my junk and knowing that I don't answer emails after 8 pm because I make really bad decisions after 8 pm because I'm tired and I'm grumpy and I don't do calls after 6 pm and I don't work on Sundays and I try not to do any computer work on Saturdays. I'll work on Saturdays but I don't try to do any computer work on Saturdays. When I started setting into parameters and when I feel tapped out on making decisions, I stop making decisions because there's no decision that I need to make that cannot wait till tomorrow. Decision fatigue is a real thing and I started making really horrible, quick decisions or I would agree to do things that I absolutely did not want to do and then end up being resentful to myself and the situation and the people. You have to figure out what are your parameters for you. I'm an introvert by nature which most people think of as crazy because I can be very extroverted but what I've learned is that I have to have my time to be able to recharge, to be able to serve those around me and if I don't have that I just can't operate on that space.

Evan Holladay: Yeah. It's the nature for you, it's the self-care and it's really setting parameters for what works for you as an individual and knowing yourself enough to know that there's a certain limit or bank of decision making. I think this is for everybody, there's only a certain amount of...

Amber Runyon: You only have so much in you every day.

Evan Holladay: Exactly, and that's OK. Like you had said, there's no decision that most people make that they need to make a decision that day.

Amber Runyon: The other thing is just finding ways to not spread yourself so think. If I book myself solid Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I'm toast Thursday and Friday. Of the way that I schedule my calls, of the way that I schedule my meetings, I looked at how does my schedule best work for me so I'm good first thing in the morning, mid-afternoon you might as well just hang me out to dry but then I get the second burst of energy midway through the day and then I get one more from about 7 to 9 pm so I learned how to work within my energy, not within my time.

Evan Holladay: Right. I think that's really powerful.

Amber Runyon: Everybody's different. Some people are like up and at 'em like McFadden and don't like, I don't like to talk to somebody early in the morning but I do some of my best creative work, some of my best writing, some of my best ideas, some of my best strategizing in the morning. When I wake up I don't check my email. I go straight to, OK, what kind of creative thing can I do, what strategy thing can I do and then I allow all that to get out of me so that it's not hanging out in my mind preoccupying me and then I go onto decision making mode. Then after decision making mode I go into planning mode and then midway through the afternoon I have to get up from my desk and go downstairs and help make candles because if not I will absolutely go insane. My team hates it but they'll get over it. Being able to get up and be active and physical in that slump of the afternoon is what gives me that additional burst of energy to be able to do the things that I have to do. And not circling yourself back to back with meetings that are just going to suck the life out of you. Don't do three of those in one day, you've got to spread those out.

Evan Holladay: Exactly, or spread those out over multiple days even.

Amber Runyon: Yes, for sure.

Evan Holladay: It's funny you say that because I've had this conversation with other guests on monumental and one of them, Dr. Richie Wade mentioned that his zone of genius or his most productive time of the day was 10 pm to 2 am. He found that time that's a little bit unique and not as many people think of that time as being the most productive time but that's where he found his niche and he's really excelled because of that.

Amber Runyon: I have two times which is usually between 4 and 7 am and then that 10 o'clock to that 1 am time. If I make it to 2 am then I'm just up for the whole night, but it's really interesting. Once I started paying attention to when I have those bursts of energy is when I was able to, I can just knock things out like a little ninja but in the times that I don't have that, it takes me five times as long to send one email whereas if I'm in my zone - and I only check my email three times a day, that's it. No more, no less because it is a black hole.

Evan Holladay: Right. Did you get that from the 4 hour work week or is that just something you set for yourself?

Amber Runyon: It was something that I literally could not dig out of my emails and what I learned was that I would go through and I would get them off and out and then by the time I went to close down my email it was full again.

Evan Holladay: [Laughs] sounds familiar.

Amber Runyon: Right, this is just one big vicious cycle so I decided I'm going to check my email three - because I'm not a brain surgeon, I'm not solving some sort of thing that if somebody does not hear back from me that their world is going to be crushed. For me, I had to look at and I absolutely hate the email. It's never ending and it's hard, I'm not an administrative person so I'm just like, "You know what? Only checking it three times a day." If you keep that cut off and I don't have it on my cell anymore.

Evan Holladay: Yeah, I turned off notifications on my phone, too.

Amber Runyon: Turned off notifications on literally everything on my phone, nothing my phone.

Evan Holladay: I'd recommend that to anybody listening.

Amber Runyon: Absolutely because what happens is that we claim to be multi-taskers and I would say that I am multi-tasker at heart but there's really no such thing. If I'm with my team and an email or a text comes through and I look at my phone, I've stopped listening to you.

Evan Holladay: Exactly. It's where you put your attention.

Amber Runyon: Yep, and I've stopped allowing my phone to dictate where my attention went.

Evan Holladay: When you mean on the mornings and at your certain points of creativity, is there anything, maybe an example of something creative that came to you during that time or even just certain things that you try to do to improve your creativity or your creation?

Amber Runyon: I think for me, I'm definitely a dreamer by far and definitely a visionary. What happens for me is I'll have these literally 800 ideas so what I do is I write them down on a note card and I put them up on my wall and if I keep thinking about that thing then I pull it off my wall and I put it in my pocket and if it's in my pocket - because sometimes I just have to get it out of my head and it will probably never come to fruition but if I can't let it go then I begin to marinate on it and so for me, it's like I have this idea or I need to connect this person or I need to connect that person so I just make all these little note cards and stick them all over so that it's out of my head. If it's out of my head then, for me it's like OK, how can we take the business model that we have and make it better? Who can I connect with? How can we loop all these things together? What does it look like to tell our story better? How does it look like to stand up for this injustice and more creative ways to get more people on board? That's what goes through my mind and sometimes it's literally like I just need to my mind and get all of these thoughts and ideas in to-do lists just out and on these papers. It's like a purging, and then it's like, "Oh, OK, now I can actually go on with my day and execute."

Evan Holladay: It's funny you say that, I have a similar type of history where I have a million different things running through my head so mine is not note cards but it's writing it down in my phone in the note section.

Amber Runyon: Yeah, my note section, I was looking it there like, "I probably should clear this out." For me, early in the morning. If I have it in the middle of the day it definitely goes in my note section in my phone but for me in the morning there's just something therapeutic for me to get up and have my cup of coffee and actually sharpie - I love drawing in sharpies - just sharpie it out onto a note card because then it just feels like I'm putting this out there. If it goes someplace, it goes someplace. If it doesn't, then at least it's out of me.

Evan Holladay: Right. As you've been growing as an entrepreneur and growing your companies, growing your non-profit, has there been anybody that you've leaned on for help or guidance along your growth?

Amber Runyon: Yeah. I'm pretty passionate about mentoring and being mentored and so what I did when I started this company was I took every personality profile test, I looked at every strength, every weakness and I wrote down all of my strengths and then I wrote down all of my weaknesses and I found people that were really good at my weaknesses and I focused on my strengths and not on my weaknesses. I am never going to be good in Excel spreadsheet, that's the truth. I'm just not going to ever be good at an Excel spreadsheet, but do you know that there are people out there who actually love Excel spreadsheets? It brings them joy. I don't understand that but it's OK, and so what I did was I looked at that and I was like, "Who do I know or who do I know who knows somebody who is really good at these different things and 1. Can they teach me? 2. Is it something that I can delegate off to somebody else?" Because I can work on an Excel spreadsheet and it would take me six hours and it would still be a dumpster on fire or I can delegate that up to somebody else who can have it done in five minutes and it would be the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. To that I really try to give my time to mentoring people that are maybe this is what they want to do or high school students or people that are like, "I want to find my passion" then I can give them that, "OK, this is what I did to find mine, it doesn't always look the same and it's a long, hard road." That was definitely something where I just looked at what am I good at, what am I bad at and then just matched people's names to what I was really bad at.

Evan Holladay: How did you connect with these people? Were they existing connections? Were they people you reached out to?

Amber Runyon: I just kept emailing them until they responded to me.

Evan Holladay: "Answer me!"

Amber Runyon: Yeah, for sure. I had numerous phone calls with people who run fortune 500 companies because I literally will email them until they respond back to me. You don't have to mention me every day, I just want to talk to you for an hour and literally just don't save anything and just soak it all up, because they've been there. I'm like, "What was it like in year two when you literally thought the sky was falling in and that you were never going to be able to pull out of this?"

Evan Holladay: Right, exactly.

Amber Runyon: When [says, "OK, this is what I did" then you listen to her and you recognize that she's now in year fifteen and she's a 220 million dollar company, you're going to be OK.

Evan Holladay: Right. I think people also have this limiting belief and idea that they can't reach out to these people and they're unattainable and they're too many steps ahead of them and I think it's really just as simple as being persistent and being honest and adding value to them.

Amber Runyon: The truth is that those people really want to tell their stories. They love young entrepreneurs, why? Because they were once a young entrepreneur. I think that somehow I was born without this ability to have some sense of pride and I was like, "Yeah, if I can get them on the phone." So I think that you just have to view that I'm able to give something to her the same as she's able to give something to me and for her it might just be that ability to sit back in her chair phone to go, "Yeah, I do remember when it was like that" and then look at what she's grown now and be able to have that moment of reflection in time of like, "Yeah, I remember when I was facing she was."

Evan Holladay: I remember when I was going through those same exact problems.

Amber Runyon: They help you not feel so alone in this world.

Evan Holladay: Going back to Eleventh Candle, is there something that drew you for the company toward candles?

Amber Runyon: No, this is actually a funny part, especially when I do interviews for like entrepreneur things. I actually don't like candles, it's fascinating. I googled, "cheapest company to start" and it was a candle company and so that's why I chose candles. Funny thing is from a business standpoint, it's a consumable, it's a multi-billion dollar industry that I didn't even know that I needed to have and the symbolism is like analogy city, left and right for me. So it worked out pretty well for me. I could just it had all these perks and benefits, it was just like, "I think I'll start a candle company."

Evan Holladay: Yes, you're lighting a flame.

Amber Runyon: Exactly.

Evan Holladay: That's awesome. I wanted to jump into what we call our Monumental Questions. These are a little bit shorter questions, there's just a few of them to wrap us up here.

Amber Runyon: OK.

Evan Holladay: What does success mean to you?

Amber Runyon: I believe in success more than I believe in statistics. Success for me is when somebody comes into our place of employment whether that's a guest or woman in our program or a home office staff and that we leave them better than how we found them.

Evan Holladay: I think that's really great. Do you have a morning ritual or habit that contributes to your successful day?

Amber Runyon: I used to not have one but now I do. I get up every morning and make myself a cup of coffee and usually open up my window which is a really weird thing but it's that extra burst of cold air to and then I spend time either meditating or praying or reading, and then I write every morning.

Evan Holladay: That's great. Is there anything that's come of your writing, has that helped open up your mind a little bit? What's been the benefit of that?

Amber Runyon: It helps me de-clutter what's going out there and it's not necessarily like a journal form, sometimes it's bullet points, sometimes it is a list, sometimes it is like actual writing and who knows what will ever come of that, if it's a blog, if it's a book, if it's a whatever and you know it's just getting it out of me and it just feels so...

Evan Holladay: Therapeutic.

Amber Runyon: It does! Like, "OK, that's out of me, now I can move on with my day." So who knows what will actually come of those and how that will work?

Evan Holladay: One thing that just came to me that I wanted to ask earlier, it just came back to me. As far as Legacy and Eleventh Candle Company is there a big vision that you have? Long term what is your big goal for your non-profit and the impact you want to have?

Amber Runyon: Big goal would be that everybody would have the same opportunity to have coaching, counseling and employment. The goal would be to grow our non-profit to be able to put women through the program and then partner with other companies so employ women that have already gone through our program, to be able to provide counseling specifically EMBR counseling to every person that is in our program and then for the for-profit I believe that healing happens in small groups so we've never thought of having this huge, big manufacturing plant but that we would take Elevens and place them all over the United States so that each community can have this healing community of women working in it, so that would be what the big goal is.

Evan Holladay: You want to take the retail portion of it nation-wide.

Amber Runyon: Retail and manufacturing. Make it experiential retail, so the manufacturing happens where the retail happens.

Evan Holladay: You told me right before we jumped on the podcast, you said that you're about to open up your retail location?

Amber Runyon: That's correct, tomorrow, about 24 hours from now.

Evan Holladay: That's awesome, congratulations.

Amber Runyon: Thanks.

Evan Holladay: Back to the Monumental Questions: what is your favorite book or book that you're currently reading?

Amber Runyon: Oh gosh, I read a ton of book but literally any book by Brene Brown. I would say that I have probably read Braving the Wilderness - and this is probably an absolute true number if not low - twenty times. And Rising Strong.

Evan Holladay: Breaking the Wilderness?

Amber Runyon: Braving, Braving the Wilderness and Rising Strong by Brene Brown.

Evan Holladay: I'm writing them down now.

Amber Runyon: Oh my gosh, they're both just absolute. Everything that Brene Brown has ever written has been consumed by people at a fire hydrant rate.

Evan Holladay: Duly noted. In closing, how can people follow you or reach out to you?

Amber Runyon: Our website, eleventhcandle.com tells you the story and you can purchase a candle there, then social media so Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, all those things is how you can get in touch with us. Me personally if you just reach out through the contact us and they'll give that email to me.

Evan Holladay: Awesome. Amber, I really appreciate your time today and it was a blast going through your journey. I can't wait to share this with everybody.

Amber Runyon: Perfect. Thanks for taking the time, Evan.

Evan Holladay: Definitely. Thank you, Amber.

What an amazing episode today with Amber. Did you guys catch how she said the three things people need to survive is safe place, save people and a purpose and how Eleventh Candle is actually creating that purpose for these women by giving them a job and giving them purpose? I just thought that was so powerful. With that, I want to thank you for listening to today's episode and please share with your friends. Share online, share on social media - I can never say that word for some reason - please share on social media and let us know what you think. Give us feedback, give us a rating, give us a review and let us know how we're doing. We'd really love to hear from you all. With that, have a Monumental day.