Most business leaders with good sense would say starting a for-profit company and a nonprofit company at the same time is not going to be a successful business venture. You need to make the money first and then invest in the nonprofit later. But that’s exactly what David Merritt, former University of Michigan point guard, did.David was so invested in the mission of his company, Merit Goodness, he was determined to find a way to make his fashion brand work just enough to simultaneously fund his after-school college planning program for Detroit youth. Since starting the company 12 years ago, they’ve helped hundreds of students graduate high school and go on to college with the resources they need to succeed for the rest of their lives. David tells Breaking Schemas co-hosts Marcus Collins and John Branch that the key ingredient to Merit Goodness is all about shifting perspective on what success means. *Breaking Schemas is a production of the Yaffe Digital Media Initiative at Michigan Ross and is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:What is Merit Goodness?17:00: We use Merit in a number of ways. It's the clothing, but it's also the platform where young people can discover their passions, create their own future, and start to build their skills in entrepreneurship, marketing, product design, and design thinking. And so, it's a holistic approach that we believe in, helping young people aspire, believe, and contribute.Going beyond the typical: Innovation and creativity for non-profit08:23: We are not a typical non-profit. So, when you think about our program, we want to think outside the box. We want to think: let's create something that hasn't been created before. How can we take elements of things that have been created and take our own spin on it? When it comes to our marketing and our videos, we don't really want to be seen in the same way as the typical non-profit sort of industry. We do like kind of mirroring both of those elements where we're taking things that are happening in business and taking things that are happening in technology, and how do we merge that mindset and expose our kids to that mindset as well.Embracing the mission beyond success23:11: It is really the mission that drives what we do. We have not been able to create a successful fashion company; that hasn't happened. So, he's exactly right. We've done 12 years of it. But the difference is that I'm not going anywhere. So, if it takes me 40 years to figure out how to make both of them work, I've got 40 years of time, right? Because I'm so tied to the mission and so tied to what we're doing. Whereas in business, a lot of times, you just don't have that luxury to be at a place long enough to really care about what should be cared about.Show Links:Merit GoodnessDavid’s LinkedIn 

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