The voluntourism example.

Question: What are your hopes for TOMS future?

Blake Mycoskie: I think that, with TOMS [Shoes], we’re at that stage that you get to, as an entrepreneur, where we’re just reaching, just beginning to really take off.

Even though we’ve been in business two years, we’ve given away 65,000 shoes, we’ll give away 200,000 shoes this year, we’re helping a lot of people. But I still think it’s just the beginning.

There are deals out there for us to do with big companies as partners where we could give away millions of shoes. And that scaleability; we have 29 employees today [April 2008]. A year ago, we only had eight employees. So a year from now, we might have 100 employees.

For me, as an entrepreneur, it’s really focusing on getting systems in place for this explosive growth that’s getting ready to happen and spending my time building relationships with  CEOs and other companies that can benefit for participating in the TOMS Shoes model.

Recorded on: April 28, 2008