He wants to create a movement where people are purpose native instead of purpose immigrant. He wants people to “walk with purpose everyday” because as a purpose native “you care more, you see the neighborhood differently, you see trash on the street and you want to pick it up, you order lunch different, you have more empathy for your friends, parents, and people you’ve never met before, and you just start to see the world differently and make decisions differently and I think that will ultimately be more transformational for impact than any amount of money that we can raise.” 

Eager to learn more about Charity Miles, Gene graciously and willingly woke up at 5 am to share his story with me pointing out that “you don’t wanna get tired of telling that story… you want to be proud to tell that story and really find meaning in what you do.” 

In the photo: Gene Gurkoff, founder of Charity Miles

A. I used to be a finance lawyer and in 2002 I started running marathons for Parkinson’s research because my grandfather has Parkinson’s. I had friends and family supporting me and I always wanted companies to sponsor me too so I could raise more money, but they would never do that because I’m not a professional athlete, I’m not a celebrity. I figured if I got enough people together we would have the clout of a celebrity and be able to drive some sort of market result for a company and they would then spend their big advertisement budgets on sponsoring us. That was the idea: to get enough people under one banner that companies could then take their big advertising budget and repurpose it for good. When mobile phones came out I started becoming interested in the power there was to crowdsource anything and I felt that maybe we could use phones to crowdsource our collective power to have the clout of celebrity so that companies would want to sponsor us— that’s how the idea came about.

As a lawyer, I was running every day with a cause in my heart and  without me even realizing it I saw my priorities changing and I realized this is what I care about. I thought to myself, “I’m going into a job that I don’t care about…why am I doing this, I need to make a change.” Ultimately, I left and started Charity Miles (which might be the right change to make for some people and not the right change to make for other people). 

I think that when you walk with purpose everyday you care more. You see the neighborhood differently, you see trash on the street and you want to pick it up, you order lunch different, you have more empathy for your friends, parents, and people you’ve never met before, and you just start to see the world differently and make decisions differently and I think that will ultimately be more transformational for impact than any amount of money that we can raise.

All of the things that we are trying to raise money for, whether it be cancer, Parkinson’s, diabetes, hunger, or nature, the money can address the symptom but the way that we walk through life will change the cause.We can slash our risk in half by walking 30 minutes a day, so if we spend billions of dollars a year on cancer and we raise a few million dollars a year to treat it its like a drop in the bucket– But if I walk 3o minutes a day I can cut the risk of cancer in half, thats a much bigger impact. If we can change the way we walk through the world so that we just care more about what our footprint is on this planet we will start to change the way we live.

A. What’s amazing to me is that when I was in college I got my first cellphone. We didn’t have Facebook, my dorms were wired for high-speed Internet the year before I got to college and that was a big deal. I’m considered a technology immigrant. When i was in law school Facebook came out… It was a big deal. You’re a technology native, you’ve grown up with it. Cellphones and the Internet have always been there, that’s the world that you know. Similarly, when I was in college there was two ways to go: (1) You got a job as a lawyer, banker, journalist or (2) You worked for a charity and made no money… And those were the options. You could make a lot of money and then give back if you were successful or you could go and not make any money and do something good with your life and it was a stark choice. Now, there’s a movement among your generation to do social entrepreneurialism. You want to go out and have an impact AND make money. I think it is common now for young people to want that, and I think it’s great! I think you’re not yet purpose native. You’re right on the border of purpose native and purpose immigrant and the kids coming up behind you will be purpose native. And I think that’s exciting.

So my advice would be first, to be an entrepreneur you have to really want it because you do starve. You go through periods where you don’t make any money and it is hard and it stresses your life in a million different ways, your family in a million different ways and it’s not for everybody. There’s nothing wrong with getting a job with a steady pay check… Everyday I wish for a job with a steady paycheck … So whether you’re looking to get a job at a company or be an entrepreneur, the most important thing is finding something that gives your life purpose and that you love. That is my advice. Whether you’re in a job or starting your own business there will be times that are very challenging and you need a “why?” and if you don’t have a good one, you will either be really unhappy in your job or you’re going to want to quit what you started as an entrepreneur.

Lets take the job situation.  If you don’t have the purpose in your job, you’re just going to go into your job everyday and collect your paycheck and feel soul-less. Unfortunately, you need a paycheck so you will have to endure that and it’s going to suck– unless you quit and you won’t have any money but you might have purpose. If you’re an entrepreneur there will be times that are existentially challenging, that will challenge who you are to the core of your being. There’s been a time, for almost a year, when things were really bad and I was broke and I wanted to quit every single day. But the reason I didn’t quit was because our members were sending stories to us everyday about how our app was impacting them— people losing 100 lbs, people walking for their kids, grandparents, and children they’ve never met around the world. The stories they were sending us were incredible, and I thought, wow, this is special and I can’t quit this. I need to find a way to make this work.