bwagy

I have great news to share the NzHerald approached me a while back to republish the blog a few times a week.

Today the first post went live! The 12 Hour Startup.

I just want to tip my hat to you all for your readership, your ideas, your support.  It wouldn’t have gotten this far without it.

-Ben

I wanted to share with you an update I got on my loan I made via Kiva to a group of Bolivians, they were creating a small group to reloan the funds to other entrepreneurs.

I got this update November 20th last year:

“This is an update on your loan to MARANATHA 2 Group in Bolivia. I visited Lucy and her next-door neighbor Felipa, both members of the Maranatha group, one Friday afternoon in Montero, a small city of 100,000 in eastern Bolivia. Lucy was at the market when we arrived, so we sat under the shade of her mango tree to enjoy some homegrown
tamarinds with her husband while we waited. Lucy soon returned with bags full of produce to cook the night’s dinner.

Lucy sells meals from her home in the evenings, and she used her Kiva loan of 4,000 bolivianos (US $557) to buy a refrigerator and some ingredients to make her specialties: tripe and pig’s stomach. She also sells chicha and somó, a
popular drink made with boiled corn, sugar, cinnamon and clove. Her cooking must have quite a reputation, because her customers come from near and far just to get their hands on a plate. Sales are good, she tells me, and she’s planning to stick with the group for its next loan cycle (its fifth).

The smell of freshly baked bread wafts into Lucy’s yard. I follow my nose next door, where Felipa and her granddaughters are hard at work baking today’s batch of bread. Felipa, like Lucy, is a founding member of the Maranatha group and has participated in all four if its loan cycles. She started her business selling donuts and pan de arroz (bread made with rice flour and mashed yucca). Then she started making regular bread, and today she sells
several varieties of rolls, some sweet and some savory. I can’t resist trying one of her piping hot rolls, which is rich, white and fluffy with a sugary topping—very delicious.

Felipa used her Kiva loan of 1,800 bolivianos (US$257) to buy flour, lard, cheese and other ingredients to make bread. She works seven days a week and sells about 230 bolivianos’ (US$33) worth of bread each day, earning 60 bolivianos (US$8) in profits. She says she enjoys working with the group, since the women all know one another very well and everyone is responsible and punctual. She has taken out individual loans before, she tells me, but prefers the
group loan because it doesn’t involve so much paperwork. Like Lucy, Felipa plans to continue working with Maranatha in future loan cycles. Out of curiosity, I ask Felipa what Maranatha means, and she shrugs and laughs—neither she nor her loan officer, Julio Cesar, can remember who thought up the name or why. “

This made my week! 

I printed it off, emailed to my friends and reread over and over.

Not only had I been to Bolivia to La Paz (near Montero) but the average income is $1,100 usd/year (Source: World Bank, 2006) and…

Felipa is now making about 350 days * $8 = $2800 a year! In a country where 40% of the population ~ 3.7 million people live in extreme poverty providing entrepreneurs with micro loans enables them to excel.  

What really really gets me excited is the flow on affects, Felipa can employee, invest, increase consumption thus reinvesting in the local economy.  

In developing countries income can flow through the economy many times in a year (adding up to potentially $10,000/year to the GDP).  

Most importantly micro loans provide capability to those willing to give it a go who in turn inspire others around them.   

Given not all Kiva loans have updates, the ones that do are worth it, and best yet I got all my money back! (reinvested in other loans).  If your still here and haven’t loaned, why not? Hop over to Kiva.

I am a huge Kiva evangelist, enabling anybody anywhere to provide micro loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries.  The capital flows are very neat.

Imagine though getting knowledge flowing in a Kiva like system.

You match up entrepreneurs in developing countries with entrepreneurs in the western world.

For sure there are barriers such as language, technology use (at the other end), lack of context by information providers.

However these aside I think there is a real need.  The cross pollination would benefit both parties.

Imagine dedicating an hour a week to work with or chat with an entrepreneur on the other side of the world.  That would be a real dream.

Oh also it would enhance the catch up effect of developing countries.  Just a thought.

This is all about you, you are doing what you do, you know you can do better, but need some ideas that you can take the ball and run with.  

This is what I do all the time, it is second nature, it is automatic, so it’s my pleasure to share it with you.

(Note since this is possibly my longest post ever! I have got a pdf download so you can print it out)

1. Fundamentally you need to realise (and always focus) it’s all about people.  People like you and me. Telling others and ourselves stories.  
2. A good story enhances status, creates enjoyment, and benefits both the storyteller and the receiver.  It is not zero sum, a good story everyone benefits.
3. Word of mouth is the best referral a consumer can get.  No really, the BEST!
4. You are a storyteller, whether you want to be or not, in what you wear, how you speak, how you walk.  You are communicating to someone at some stage something.  (Stop and reread this).
5. Forget about parasite marketing, sustainable businesses are built on building products that help the purchaser.  If you can help your clients enough to create a worthy story you have an endless chain of word of mouth.
6. We have all heard, a bad experience results in 64 people hearing about it, a good experience leads to 8 hearing about it.  Sounds out of whack right? Wrong.  If I have a good experience with you I will repeat my purchase, if you keep looking after me, i will keep telling 8 people forever…. and everytime I make a purchase.  Marketing & Business is all about the long term.  If you can get a customer and keep them forever they will sell your products for you.  Easy.   Never forget this.  A good customer experience compounds over time.
7. Expecting a sale on the first interaction is short sighted.  Consumers like to wooed, taken for a dance, candlelight dinner.  If you can expose them to your brand several times in different avenues you are more likely to build a satisfied customer.  Remember every exposure is an opportunity to help explain your value proposition.  (Now reread #6).
8. Put yourself in your customers shoes, what am i gaining from this? what is the story i am telling myself? why am i motived to talk to others about your story? 
9. If it doesn’t feel right it often isn’t.  If you are too ashamed to tell those around you what you do, or people you admire, you probably shouldn’t be doing it.
10. People like you, people like the team behind your products, your loyal customers actually want to be their friends (although they realise they can’t) but utilise that.  Get your people to talk with customers, over the phone, twitter, blogs.  Expose the people behind the scenes.  The cross pollination between customers and staff is only going to benefit both parties.  Hint: it also creates a new ‘exclusive’ story for each of those loyal customers.
11. You are always wrong, you just need to be less wrong than your competitors.
12. Forget magic answers, they don’t exist, you know what you need to do.  So do it.  Obsess about customers, drive insane value, your marketing is sorted, now collect the cheques.
13. Cut back, you don’t need 20 channels, cut back to what you do exceedingly well, then get better at it, being the absolute bleeding edge best is far more important than scrapping a few extra dollars.  You will doubt yourself, but hang in there.
14. Bring the whole team together, encourage diversity, open discussions, new ideas, get them to take listening courses, involve them in strategic visions, they define your company to the outside world, so make sure they know what they are defining.
15. Mass advertising builds subconscious brand recognition, but word of mouth demands a purchasing decision.
16. Chase things that scare your organisation, chances are they scare your competitors too, that is signal enough that you at least need to explore it.

The biggest let down with firms trying to innovate is that they do not create the space for innovation to occur.

What happens when staff have new ideas? Who do they pitch to? Do they know who they should pitch to?

More often than not the ideas get squashed, as they threaten someone else.

To create a culture of innovation, ideas need to be open, shared, spared and rewarded.

Create a space for it to happen, have a Monday Ideas Post, a 12 hour startup day, a huge whiteboard in the middle of headquarters (like Google).

Once you have created that void, people will fill it and surprisingly fast.

Given the transitional environment at the moment I thought I would share the words of the new economy.

Obsess, obsession about your customers, how can i help them? how can i deliver insane value, how can i build their business?

Passion, what is my passion? am i fulfilling it? What are my employees passions and how can we utilise that? Do we have a team of passionate people?

Delicious, are your services delicious? are they the nicest in your category, if i was to eat your business would it be delicious?

Agility, we need to be leaner, fitter, agile in every sense.  Leveraging our resources to achieve results that we used to do with twice the resource base.

Manufacturing has been predominantly shifting offshore for well over a decade.

We all know this.

Companies know this.

Yet we are still shocked when another company decides to go offshore.

People do lose jobs, which is a hard jolt, ultimately in the long run (in theory) they will fill positions that deliver higher value to the economy.

At the moment jobs are going to go offshore at an alarming rate and it’s not going to stop.  Why? Companies are set up to make a profit for their owners, until that changes, companies will explore the most profitable solutions.

That aside, what I want to touch on is being proactive.

If this has been a trend for so long, why haven’t governments set up proactive departments? That seek out manufacturers, help them go offshore but also help them upskill their workers and maximise the opportunities for them.

This would be the smartest move for all.

Why try and stop the inevitable, be proactive, everyone wins.