No one is asking for more than your best. But they’re also not asking for less. In any position, including leadership, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the opportunity and the pressure of what’s ahead or what’s expected of you. Maybe you envision an epic outcome or finished product, but aren’t 100% sure of every single step to get there. You have to just go for it. Lean into what you know, trust your intellect and decision-making, ask questions, and stay optimistic. Once you push through these challenges, you look back and realize that your best effort was exactly what was needed. You are capable — that’s why you’re in the position you’re in. Your best work is absolutely enough. The flip side of this advice is that, in those moments of uncertainty or diving into something new, you can’t put in any less than your best effort and expect a successful outcome. Commit, strive, stay curious, and deliver.
As a part of our series about stars who are making an important social impact, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ben Erwin.
As the CEO of Charitybuzz, Ben Erwin leads a talented, entrepreneurial team committed to leveraging capitalism as a vehicle for good. With over 15 years of experience in the e-commerce and digital space, he has a proven track record of building and scaling profitable businesses.
He has forged strong relationships with renowned investors, celebrities, influencers, and nonprofit leaders, and has successfully navigated the acquisition and integration of Charitybuzz and Prizeo. He’s passionate about e-commerce and its ability to support important causes around the world. He is also an active member and the DEI officer of YPO New York Polaris and a co-founder of RFK Young Leaders, a program of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights dedicated to empowering human rights defenders and motivating a diverse community of young people to take action for social justice.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
When I graduated college, I saw two potential paths in front of me: go make money, or go do something good for the world and live on ramen noodles. Naively, I thought the whole point of working was to make money and that’s all that mattered, so I opted for that first path. When I started my first job out of school, despite the earning potential that came with that very aggressive sales role, I quickly realized I was looking at this wrong. I could not imagine spending the majority of my waking life doing something for which I did not have a passion, constantly staring at the clock and feeling unfulfilled. It was not a recipe for happiness. After that revelation, I started searching for opportunities to fill that void. When I came across Charitybuzz, I felt a kind of perfect convergence of who I am, what I care about, and what I realistically need — it’s a for-profit, growing, promising business, but really putting a meaningful mark on a sector (cause) that needed some new energy and effort.
Over the past nearly two decades, I’ve learned and struggled and stalled and accelerated and evolved everything in between, all on the journey of building this leading impact marketplace. I believe so strongly in our mission and purpose, it’s like Charitybuzz has become a part of who I am. I joined when this company was not even yet a business, but just an idea. That is what allowed me to chart my own course and develop the business in my own way. Charitybuzz helped me scratch the entrepreneurial itch I didn’t know was there until the opportunity presented itself.
Thanks to talented and passionate colleagues, committed charity partners, and a significant amount of grit and willpower, I’ve remained part of Charitybuzz this whole time, and am now leading the business as CEO.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company or organization?
Our business is built to serve a behind-the-scenes facilitator type function, providing incredible experiences and access to our customers and raising funds for charities. We’re not often actually out there experiencing the bucket-list adventures we’re known for providing — we’re at our desks keeping it all moving. But in 2023, I ended up sitting down at our Charitybuzz-hosted dinner with the one-and-only George Clooney, raising funds and awareness for his foundation for social justice. In a full-circle moment, bringing together all we’ve been building, A handful of our generous customers joined the star and the leadership of the Clooney Foundation for Justice for a special event we conceptualized and hosted in NYC. I will absolutely never forget the moment when George took the floor and addressed the table of successful, influential customers, and started saying how great Charitybuzz is. He said something to the effect of, “Charitybuzz — how cool is this??” to which everyone enthusiastically agreed. What better way to hear this endorsement than from George Clooney himself? It was a really meaningful moment for everyone, including George, as we were bringing him new supporters, new unrestricted funding, and an enjoyable, memorable experience.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I can share something that’s not a funny mistake, but a very important mistake I distinctly remember. That is: If you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. My background before Charitybuzz and throughout my earlier years here was all in sales and business development. When I was promoted to oversee parts of the business that were not sales — in some cases very different from it — I foolishly assumed I would just expand my bandwidth, do what I’d been doing successfully in sales, and figure it out. I maybe even believed that that is what I was doing, until an interesting experience came up… I was preparing to lead a session presenting to a school’s business club, and wanted to be able to answer the question, “what does a CEO do?” For a few weeks leading up to the seminar, I charted how I was spending my time. I realized quickly that I was unintentionally spending way more time doing the things I’ve always done. Looking at how I was spending my hours was eye opening, and gave me a baseline and a renewed focus on how to more evenly distribute my time across my various responsibilities. The great thing for me is that a lot of a CEO’s responsibilities are selling, just in different ways. For example, you’re motivating people and driving adoption of a vision, you’re bringing on strategic partners with shared goals, you’re spearheading new initiatives, etc.
Can you describe how you or your organization is making a significant social impact?
This is a particularly easy question for Charitybuzz to answer, because it is the basis of our whole business. We exist to bring people incredible experiences and access, to move new funding into the hands of charities generating impact. For us, social impact is built in, so we’ve never had to manufacture or inflate what we’re doing. A portion of every auction win, buy-now purchase in The Shop, sweepstakes donation, or private sale is donated to a charity. That’s how it’s been from day one. It’s why we exist.
There are other shop-and-give-back brands and storefronts, for sure, but Charitybuzz is unique in that we unlock new value for both the sellers and the buyers. For donors or organizations that sell or auction through our platform, they’re reaching a “virtual stadium” of hundreds of thousands of high-net-worth customers they would never otherwise connect with. This can mean new board members, faster fundraising, and, of course, new money coming in. For buyers who are winning our auctions and purchasing our experiences, they’re receiving opportunities and access they’d never be able to find elsewhere. If you want to live your best life, give the coolest gifts, go on the best adventures, meet the stars, and overall embrace joy, why not choose to do that through a marketplace that has charitable impact built in? Simply by choosing Charitybuzz, people are moving funds from the entertainment, travel and other industries, over to the charitable sector. That means, together, we’re increasing the amount of funding charities have to execute their vital work.
Can you tell us a story about a particular individual or organization who was impacted or helped by Charitybuzz?
We’ve raised hundreds of millions of dollars over the years to bring charities new, unrestricted funding to which they would otherwise not have access, WHILE creating once-in-a-lifetime, memorable, joyful experiences for customers across the globe. The perfect example of our unique, 360-degree value is from a few years back, when we were coming up with this brand new vertical for our platform of business experiences (which is now a top-performing theme every year, raising $10M+ to-date). We tapped into the opportunity to work with one of the Shark Tank “sharks,” Lori Greiner, to raise funds for causes Lori cares about, Ignite the Spirit (supporting Chicago Fire Department) and the Chicago Police Memorial Foundation. The auction ended up selling for around $30K, which was great on its own. But THEN we learned the winner of the auction was an entrepreneur who wanted to show her product to Lori, and had followed their instincts and used the last $30K from her business account to win this auction. She knew she wanted to take that risk. So the winner had lunch with Lori, showed her her product, and Lori immediately fell in love with it. Before we knew it, everything was organized to launch this product on QVC and Lori + our winner sold millions of dollars of product on QVC alone. So by donating a lunch to support important causes, 1. Lori ended up with a new business opportunity, 2. The charities received new, unrestricted funding they did not have before, and 3. The winner had the meeting of a lifetime that single-handedly turned their business into a success. That’s the power of experiences combined with the power of charity. Having the charitable aspect built into the model is what compels people to do things they may not have done otherwise, and opens up access we would not normally have. This entrepreneur was not going into a pitch with Lori after cold calling, but rather meeting her in a very warm, open setting after donating to charities Lori cares deeply about. That setup can accelerate everything and help everyone win — as you can see from this story.
How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
Leaders set the example. It is their responsibility to embody the mission, vision and values all of the time. They motivate and communicate the big-picture views. But they’re also actively “driving the bus” — they need to make sure the right people get on the bus, then, together, navigate toward your goals. To do this, you can’t just tell people what to do or tell them “do better!” You need to walk the walk AND talk the talk. Most people are more engaged when their leaders are working hard and taking the time to connect with them. I’ve learned that leadership is about really understanding people’s motivations and unique skillsets, to unlocking everyone’s potential. What is important to each team member?
In 2020, we learned firsthand, like many others did, how vital leadership can be. When the world shut down that spring, we were jolted into answering and acting on “what’s our move?” Not only was it a change from our culture which was very office-centric and connected, but we’re dealing with issues affecting our business very directly (live events shutting down, travel, movie production paused, etc.). We could have put our head in our arms and said “we don’t have a shot, so let’s just try to scrape by.” Instead, we made the purposeful decision to figure out a way to grow and get better. We over-communicated with one another to ease the uncertainty of the era. We researched and strategized, and developed our own point-of-view on what the consumer was going to look like, and what trends were going to develop. Of course, like everyone else, we had no real idea, but it was essential for us to have this unified point-of-view so we were all rowing in the same direction. That creativity, cohesion and commitment gave us the foundation to just start moving. And we moved fast. We did run into walls — most of the walls were concrete, but some were drywall, and we plowed right through those toward our mission and vision. We ended up coming out of the pandemic a better company than when we entered into it. By understanding and appreciating what motivated the team, we were able to give people the purpose they needed in that difficult time. The end result was better than we could have anticipated.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why. Please share a story or example for each.
1 . Mission matters. I was drawn to the concept of Charitybuzz because of how it uniquely merges the tenants of a successful for-profit business with the important goal of generating positive impact. The thing is — no jobs are easy-breezy and perfect all the time, even if you’re working toward an admirable goal. Learning from my own experience, now, when I interview people for Charitybuzz, I’m honest with them about this being a hard job — it’s not just hanging out with celebrities at cool events. There are the challenges that surround ecommerce businesses, we have some long days, we face ups and downs, just like any other job. If what is inspiring someone to work here is our mission — the impact and bigger purpose — then this is a great job for them. If that’s not why you’re interested in working here, that’s totally fine, but it’s not going to be for you. We are constantly turning back to that mission and tapping into what it means for each of us to get through the inevitable challenges any given day. For the people who are passionate about our mission, this is what drives us, and the team tends to stick around for many years because of Charitybuzz’s unique ability to connect our team with our mission.
2 . People always advise to trust your instincts, and I strongly believe in that as well. What I would add is that, maybe, trusting your instincts is actually not the most difficult to learn. What I wish someone had advised me earlier on is that, when you do trust your instincts — whether it’s about the direction of the business, a big financial decision, branding, org structure, or really anything — you need to fortify yourself with the confidence + evidence to get through the next steps to act on your instincts. For a leader, you need to believe in your decisions at such a level that keeps your foundation strong and your execution sturdy.
Nobody is right all the time, but it’s important to be decisive. Even if your gut is “wrong,” the only way to calibrate and learn is to keep trusting and reflect accordingly. I also advise to always review why a decision worked out or didn’t work out. Your team and anyone you work with will appreciate and respect you for being real and working to improve. But don’t give up on listening to your instincts — your gut will get more accurate if you continue feeding it more information.
3 . Delegating is essential to getting anything done, and that includes delegating decision-making, management, and other high-level aspects of running your company. Anyone in a management position quickly learns nothing is feasible without delegating to other team members — but that doesn’t always mean handing out tactical to-do lists of execution-level tasks. Most leaders are passionate about their businesses and want to be involved in every aspect. Trying to achieve that is a) impossible and b) going to severely distract from your most important, designated value as the CEO of the entire business.
Everybody believes in deleting, but human nature is what it is, and we always start off by thinking we will do the thing better than anybody else. When you let that thought motivate your actions, that will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. No one will improve and grow to your level if you are the only one doing the thing. You need to actually let other people start doing it. When you’re able to develop the people around you to become the professionals you want and need, you’re creating a successful organization. The best case scenario is when you have people excelling in their individual roles at a level even better than if you were handling those functions.
4 . You will never “get” a break; you have to carve them out for yourself. When you’re leading a business, there is always something you can be analyzing, challenging, testing, discussing… And there are inevitably those fire drills that arise that require thoughtful and strong leadership. But it is just not possible as a human person to work nonstop, every single day, year after year. It’s on you to notice the moments that may require less from you, and overcome your fears of taking time away. Every time I take a weekend trip with my family or a Monday off here and there to get out on the golf course, I return back to work refueled, refocused and better overall.
This connects directly with the point I made above about delegating, because, when you have a capable team working toward a shared goal, you don’t need to be in the weeds on every single project or decision, which should allow you to lean out every once in a while to recharge.
5 . No one is asking for more than your best. But they’re also not asking for less. In any position, including leadership, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the opportunity and the pressure of what’s ahead or what’s expected of you. Maybe you envision an epic outcome or finished product, but aren’t 100% sure of every single step to get there. You have to just go for it. Lean into what you know, trust your intellect and decision-making, ask questions, and stay optimistic. Once you push through these challenges, you look back and realize that your best effort was exactly what was needed. You are capable — that’s why you’re in the position you’re in. Your best work is absolutely enough. The flip side of this advice is that, in those moments of uncertainty or diving into something new, you can’t put in any less than your best effort and expect a successful outcome. Commit, strive, stay curious, and deliver.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
As somebody who has been working on this same business for nearly two decades — though through different iterations and ownership — I find myself always speaking with my team about change. Rather than hold up another person’s quote to guide us, I speak from my own experience as directly as possible to our team. Change is never easy. But progress is not possible without change. Human nature is comfortable with the status quo. To generate real change, everyone needs to work together through commitment, discipline and accountability. Change doesn’t happen by introducing or presenting something new… You have to do it, and do it all together.
Thank you so much for these amazing insights. This was so inspiring, and we wish you continued success!
Social Impact Heroes: Why & How Ben Erwin of Charitybuzz Is Helping To Change Our World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.