Entrepreneurs Archives - Page 6 of 8

Ending Labor Abuse in Thailand - Sompong Srakaew, Labor Rights Protection Network

In this episode of Entrepreneurs For Good, I speak with Labor Right Promotion Network Founder Sompong Srakaew about his mission to end labor abuse in Thailand.

A challenge that has received a lot of coverage recently, particularly in the fishing industry, through a network of volunteers and a range of outreach programs, Sompong has helped improve the awareness of the issues and drive improvement in labor standards.

Having seen the challenges in other parts of Asia, and how through economic development real changes can be made, I found Sompong's commitment to his cause not only inspirational but something that is a fundamental requirement for success.

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About the Entrepreneurs For Good Series

Through this series, we speak with Asia based entrepreneurs whose mission it is to bring solutions to the environmental, social, and economic challenges that are faced within the region to learn more about their vision, the opportunities they see, and challenges that they have had to overcome.

It is a series that we hope will not only engage and inspire you, but catalyze you and your organizations into action. To identify a challenge that is tangible, and build a business model (profit or non) that brings a solution to the market.

About Sompong

Sompong was born in a rural village in Surin province, on the Thai-Cambodian border. He grew up in a poor farming household as the fourth of five children. As a top student of his class, Sompong earned a full university scholarship. Faced with limitless career opportunities, he chose to pursue a degree in social work.

Sompong Srakaew founded the Labour Rights Promotion Network (LPN) in 2006 because of the injustices he saw in the treatment of migrant workers in Thailand’s seafood processing industry. Sompong began working on migrant worker issues as early as the 1990s, after graduating with a degree in social work.

In 2008, Sompong co-founded the Migrant Working Group, a collective of Thai and international organizations working on policy advocacy for migrant children and migrant workers in general. In 2012, he co-founded Partners for the Rights of Children on the Move, a collective of 20 COs working to protect migrant children and women.

Follow Sompong and LRPN
Website: https://lpnthailand.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Labour-Rights-Promotion-Network-371018579290
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sompong-srakaew-0a8a4a106

About Rich

Driven by the belief that change begins with a single step, Richard Brubaker has spent the last 15 years in Asia working to engage, inspire, and equip those around him to take their first step. Acting as a catalyst to driving sustainability, Brubaker works with government, corporate, academic and non-profit stakeholders to bring together knowledge, teams, and tools that develop and execute their business case for sustainability.

Follow Rich
Website: http://www.richbrubaker.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rich.brubaker
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richbrubaker
Instagram: https://instagram.com/richbrubaker
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/richbrubaker

Contact Rich
[email protected]

Full Interview Transcript

For more interviews from the "Entrepreneurs for Good" series, check out the playlist here.

Stay tuned for more clips and full interviews in the coming weeks.

by Rich

Urban Farming in Hong Kong - Pol Fàbrega, Rooftop Republic

In this episode I speak with Pol Fabrega about his experience building Rooftop Republic. Interviewed on his own rooftop, we dug into the movement of urban farming, the potential for urban farming in Hong Kong, and building his business. It is an interview that is full of tactics, and lessons of resiliency, patience, and building a movement towards something better within the confines of today's economic models and consumer expectations.

About the Entrepreneurs For Good Series

About Pol

After graduating with a MA in International Relations, Pol devoted the first years of my career to the academic and non-profit sectors where he worked in Europe and Asia on a wide range of issues from education to human trafficking, gender equality, or human rights.

In 2012, life brought Pol to Hong Kong where he had the chance to connect with the local organic farming movement, where he realised the potential of urban farming to transforming the way we currently grow, consume and think about food.

At Rooftop Republic, he am mostly responsible for business development, programme management and finances.

Follow Pol and Rooftop Republic
Website: https://www.rooftoprepublic.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pol.fabrega.9
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pol-f%C3%A0brega-vilella-b1002040/
Instagram: https://instagram.com/rooftop_republic/

About Rich

Follow Rich
Website: http://www.richbrubaker.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rich.brubaker
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richbrubaker
Snapchat: http://snapchat.com/add/richbrubaker
Instagram: https://instagram.com/richbrubaker
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/richbrubaker

Contact Rich
[email protected]

Full Interview Transcript

RICH: I'm here with my friend Pol from Rooftop Republic. It is at night, but we are here to talk about rooftop gardens in Hong Kong. I wish you could all see the garden that he has, but hopefully you're enjoying the background. Remember if you like this, if you find value, if you enjoy his story, please remember to like, share and comment.

Thank you very much, Pol. Appreciate your time spending with us. So, do me a favor and introduce yourself and introduce Rooftop Republic.

POL: My name is Pol Fabrega and I'm the cofounder of Rooftop Republic. Social enterprise that promotes urban farming in Hong Kong. Our main vision for Rooftop Republic is to integrate urban farming into our city lifestyle. So we set up farms on rooftops. We help to maintain those farms and we organize a lot of workshops and programs around urban farming and around food and around sustainability as well.

URBAN FARMING IN HONG KONG

RICH: What is an urban farm and what does urban farming look like in Hong Kong right now?

POL: So an urban farm is basically a farm within the city limits. It can be right in the middle of the city, like right now right now here on this building. Or it can be within the _____ (1:32) urban areas surrounding of a city. So in the surroundings of a city. The particular like case of Hong Kong is quite interesting because we live in a very densely populated city. We have an area out there called the new territories. There is a little more of a rural sort of land and there is more farmland, but here in the city is a very dense, very sort of concrete jungle kind of city. What that means is that when we set up farms within the city, generally we do it on rooftops just because that's the most widely available space in Hong Kong.

THE GOAL OF URBAN FARMING

RICH: Are we gonna feed people using rooftops? Like what's the goal of urban farming at it's central core right now?

POL: There is a university professor here in Hong Kong who has been doing a lot of research on rooftop farming. He has estimated that there is around 600 hectors of rooftop space that could be available, could be suitable for rooftop farming. That almost equals the amount of farmland that is currently farms in Hong Kong. So, only with the rooftop space we could double, you know the amount of, not necessarily double the yield because we might not get the same yield, but double the amount of space that we using for farming today.

CAN ROOFTOPS FEED HK?

RICH: Yeah, and actually that's kinda my question. Ok you have 600 hectors potentially, but it's spread out over a little 20 square meters, 50 square meters. It's actually really an efficient space, so how do you make this work?

POL: So for us, our model, like we were with a wide range of clients and they have different interests. They have different, they come to us for different you know with different approaches I guess. So we work a lot with property developers obviously to set up farms within their buildings. This can be within commercial buildings, this can be within industrial buildings, part of residential buildings and but we are also with hotels and restaurants to supply their you know to supply their kitchens in this case. But we also work with schools more for educational purposes. We work with corporates more like employee engagement and sustainability and corporate social responsibility. We work with community organizations more for the community and social aspect of having an urban farm and we work with individuals. This is my rooftop and I have a few planters where I'm able to grow my own vegetables.

So you know different kinds of people, different kinds of clients from our perspective have different kinds of interests and we'll use those spaces and those yields for different, for different reasons I guess.

RICH: We're in Hong Kong. It's pretty tropical year round. What are the types of plants or vegetables or like what can you do on a rooftop like this. What works, what doesn't?

POL: So in Hong Kong, we mostly divide the seasons in to two main seasons. The cold season or the warm season. Now we're entering the cold season. So between September/October all the way until April/May, it's the time of the year where we can grow wider range of things because the temperatures are little bit more mild and bit more or like it doesn't rain so much, it's not so hot so humid. We grow all kinds of things. We grow everything from tomatoes, carrots, beet roots, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, speed roots, all kinds of things.

Then in the summer in the warm season, we grow maybe a little bit less variety, but we can still grow a lot of things like beans, eggplant, squash cucumbers, peppers, bazo, chili, sweet potatoes, water spinach. So this basically it's always a season for something. What we try to educate the people is that you need to know what to grow when. To be able to be a successful farmer.

RICH: How did you get into this?

POL: So I'm originally from Barcelona. Before coming to Hong Kong, I absolutely knew nothing about farming, about food, about growing. Certainly I would not have imagined to be coming to Hong Kong to become an urban farmer. But I came to Hong Kong 5 years ago and I had the chance to connect with a local organic farmers here in Hong Kong. There's actually a lot of farmers in Hong Kong There's around 450 organic farms in the new territories, different sizes. Some are a bit smaller, some are a bit larger, but I started to kind of learn from them. Started to become more interested in growing, in food, and our food system started seeing all the problems associated with our core and food system. Started thinking about together with my cofounders, started thinking about how can we bring this movement, which is kind of developing in the new territories to the heart of the city and make it accessible to city dwellers.

GOING ALL IN

RICH: How did you know this was more than just a hobby that you come up on a Sundays and you pick you beans? How did you know you could make money? How did you know you could build organizations? Like what did it take before you made the jump on your own?

POL: I had no idea basically. Sort of like had no business plan, had no you know this is something quite new, it's quite an infant sort of industry especially in Hong Kong. It might be much more developed in other countries, but here we didn't have any reference really. Is this gonna fly? Is this gonna work? Are people going to like it? Are people going to be willing to pay for it? Who are going to be our clients? We had an idea obviously, but we had no idea whether or not the market would respond to our assumptions. Luckily enough we were able to quickly realize that there was, there was the demand for our services. From there obviously that was a lot of iterations, developing your services, improving them, getting feedback from your clients, learning as you go along and sort of fine tuning your business model and your business as a whole.

EARLY LESSONS

RICH: What were the early lessons that you think were just super critical to either learn from failure or like wow, we got that right. Like we had that.

POL: The technical side of farming was something we were not really familiar with. So we needed to overcome that by surrounding ourselves with some you know with some expert organic farmers that were working with us and that still work with us. So I would say would one of the main challenges.

The other challenge was how are we going to market ourselves and how we market ourselves to different kinds of clients Because like I said different clients come to us with different, very different interests. Everything from a school, who runs a school programs to a corporate who wants employee engagement and sustainability sort of program initiative. So these are very different clients, different users at the end of the day of our farms.

SEGMENTATION AND FOCUS

RICH: Is it a good thing to go after so many different types of clients or should you just focus...like each one's different so how so how do you make sure you maintain quality for all of them?

POL: So we had to develop, we had to develop tailor made solutions and this took a while obviously. You know we didn't have curriculums to give to schools for example at the beginning. So we were you know putting together workshops, curriculums and learning from other trainings that we had undertaken ourselves, consulting with farmers and so on to actually deliver something that would be suitable for a school for example. We need to try and build customize solutions that could be applicable to different client segments. We didn't focus like our range of clients was a little more limited at the beginning and then we kind of expanded gradually as we went along.

PERFECTING THE GRIND

RICH: So the core. What are some things you have to do every day to make it work to like, to succeed to have a valuable proposition that's stable? What are two or three things that just have to work every day?

POL: One of our key services is so we set up farms that's one main service. We design and install these farms, but also we do the management of these farms. It this is actually very critical especially from a business perspective. So when we set up a farm we have a client and we design it an set it up, that is one of the bit of revenue that we get. But what happens afterwards? How can we ensure that project is successful, sustainable and it's achieving the objectives that is has and it's making you know the client happy with it.

That's where our second service comes in where we provide a farm management service where we need to, not only is it a technical sort of support we provide where we send organic farmers to all of these farms to do some maintenance, but it is also managing the client's stakeholders. All of the users of these farms and how do we successfully and effectively engage them in the day to day running of the farm. How do we build an understanding? How do we build their passion for it? How we keep that momentum goin?. That is the most challenging one and that is where we are putting in a lot of energy.

PERSONAL RISK

RICH: You live in one of the most expensive cities in the world. How do you make this work for yourself personally?

POL: Obviously as an entrepreneur when you start on this journey you take a lot of risks and there are a lot of uncertainties. Together with my cofounders we invested some of our savings into this without necessarily knowing whether it was going to fly. You need to kind of be able to take that jump and have confidence that you have something that might be valuable and might work out and keep working on it.

It has worked out for us. Today we have 3 cofounders, we have 2 staff and we have a lot of people that we work with on a more part-time basis more on a project basis. So if you're able to pay five salaries, fulltime salaries. We are able to pay several part-time salaries by building our pipeline, expanding the client base, doing a lot of business development, putting the word out there, a lot of marketing and also media, media attention, media coverage that definitely helps to sort of reach different audiences. It has been working out so far. We've been around for 2 years and half and we're still kicking so.

RICH: Kicking is the first step to thriving right? So that's ok. You're still alive.

SCALE

RICH: You've got over 30 rooftops now?

POL: Over 30, yes.

RICH: Over 30, where do you go from here? Like how many can you achieve here? How many do you want? Then is scale something you talk about, something you dream about or is 30 a good number for you?

POL: No, I think 30 is just a start. We feel like potentially in Hong Kong we specially see a lot of potential more working more directly with property developers and architecture firms to actually integrate urban farms in spite of their designs. So entering like the history, like the life of a building at the design stage where we can actually fully integrate it into the whole building. There is a whole trend towards green building in Hong Kong and also abroad. There is a whole trend towards well being, promoting well being and building environments. So this fits very well with general trends we seen in the architecture and the property sector.

So we see a huge window of opportunity there to develop our business in that direction. Both in Hong Kong and abroad. We already have a couple of projects in China. One in Hunan, in Wong Dong and we get inquiries from other regions, Shanghai, from ____(12:49) from other parts of China and also from other parts of Asia. Mostly like bigger cities and we see that there's a lot of potential to develop, expand our operation here in Hong Kong, but also tap into some of these other nearby markets that have similar markets for that.

RICH: Very Good.

MEASURING SUCCESS

RICH: How do you measure success for your organization. How do you measure the impact that you are trying to have?

POL: We have a lot of quantitative indicators that we are tracking. Everything from how many arms have we set up, how many square feet of underused urban space are we transforming into urban farms. Yields that we are getting form some of our rooftops. Number of workshops and programs that we are running. Number of participants that are attending these workshops. Number of people that we are training to become urban farmers because we are also doing some trainings for different groups with sort of underprivileged backgrounds to provide them with job opportunities and employment opportunities.

So how many have we trained, how many of them actually employed at the end of the program, etc, etc. So there are a lot of more quantitative indicators that we are trying to track to measure how much impact we having. But then there's also a whole range of quantative data that we would like to also dig into and collect although it is much more complex arena, but trying to see how people are reacting to this project. Ok, you been part of part of this project as been participating this urban farm for a year. How do you feel different about food? How do you...have you changed your behavior in shopping?

RICH: So you're trying to measure the immeasurable.

POL: Yes. Like the quality, like mindset change, behavior change.

RICH: That's the tough stuff to measure. People talk a lot about that.

POL: Yes. Do we try and do survey's before and after the program. How have you changed your perspective of food? On farming, etc, etc.? Trying to capture that change in their behavior.

TIPS TO VIEWERS

RICH: You have an aspiring entrepreneur watching this. What are three pieces of advice you give to someone when they're starting this process? Like what are the three keys to success? Like what are the three things they should avoid? Or what are the three challenges they should persevere through because it's fucking hard! Right?

POL: It's a very lonely journey. It's a very hard, you know it involves a lot of hard work. I don't want to paint like a pink picture of what being an entrepreneur is because it has a lot of nuances being an entrepreneur. It's incredibly gratifying and it's incredibly rewarding on many levels because you're building up your own thing and you're creating your own. You're sort of developing your own visions for something. So that's really exciting and that's what drives me and that's what keeps me going and what makes me sort of overcome all the obstacles.

But you also need to be aware that there will be hard times. There will be a lot of uncertainties. There will be a lot of risks you will have to take and sort of adventure into the unknown and be able to navigate through that. Find what works for you. Find that balance that works for you in managing this feelings, this emotions and this...

RICH: When you're navigating that, what's your..what is your flashlight? What is your compass? What are the things that you....what are the tools you have when you're really trying to navigate through that when you're uncertain? What are the things that you have to have to get through that?

POL: One of the things that we really have been working on is since you're a startup, you only have so many resources. You only have so many people. You only have so many skills sets. You have so many gaps. You have to change hats and double, you know, double up to do everything a business or organization needs to achieve. So you need to surround yourself. You need to build your network. You need to build a pool of people that are there to support you when you need them. So you need to really establish those relationships with advisors. With people who are at good with finance or people who are good at market. Or people who are good at different aspects of your work that you might not be necessarily very good at and sort of trying to find how you can think creatively about...ok, I don't have money to pay someone fulltime to be my marketing manager, but I need marketing. So how do I creatively find a solution for it.

One of the things we tried to do is surround ourselves with good people around us, good advisors that can fill in the gaps when we need that can support us along the way.

RICH: Thank you very much for your time.

POL: Thanks Richard, it's a pleasure.

For more interviews from the "Entrepreneurs for Good" series, check out the playlist here.

Stay tuned for more clips and full interviews in the coming weeks.

by Rich

Do the Work. Trust Your Process - Abigail Smith, Thai Harvest SOS

In this episode of Entrepreneurs For Good, I speak with Abigail Smith, who a year and a half ago established Thai Harvest SOS. An amazing organization that has, in just a short time created a process that is able to safely redistribute more than a ton of food a day to more than 20 communities in Bangkok.

For Abigail, she sees this time as a pilot for building the process, systems, and support needed to take this to the next level, and in my conversation with her we discussed a wide range of different systems that she is focused on, trying to nail down, or is struggling to bring to scale.

There is a lot of valuable content in here, even for the most experienced leader, and I hope you will enjoy watching this conversation as much as I (we) did filming it!

This interview is about identifying a problem, and building systems that address that problem and bring a measurable impact.

About the Entrepreneurs For Good Series

About Abigail

Thai Harvest SOS is a charity dedicated to the reduction of food waste and the redistribution of food fit for for consumption but not sale to those that need it.

Thai Harvest SOS collects non sellable but consumable food free of charge and sends it to communities where it can be of use. Food not fit for consumption is sent to local farms for composting.

Abigail Smith, originally from the U.S., is the group's operations director for Thailand and is responsible for driving its mission to "reduce food waste and use it in the most meaningful way."

Follow Abigail
Website: https://www.scholarsofsustenance.org/thailand
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abigail-smith-44a25681/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thailandsos

About Rich

Contact Rich
[email protected]

Full Interview Transcript

RICH: Good afternoon everybody I'm here with Abigail from Thailand Harvest SOS. We just had the most amazing interview and I think you're going to love this one. We covered everything from having a laid to like process to focus on your organization. The myth of the administration costs and just going from getting through one day, to one week to one month to changing the world. We hope that you enjoy this episode. I know I sure as hell did and if you do, please like, share and comment on her Facebook page. On every Facebook page. Thank you Abigail, this has been hysterical.

BACKGROUND

RICH: Tell me about your operating plan. How many trucks do you have and how much food do you process?

ABIGAIL: Twenty one food donors right now all over Bangkok. We're processing anywhere from, it's averaging out to about 900 kilos a day. Cuz we do get some bulk in every once and a while and 900 kilos a day and about 22 recipient communicates throughout the city of Bangkok.

RICH: And do you move it, do you like you get it that afternoon and it has to be out your door by the evening?

ABIGAIL: Pretty much. Anything that my trucks, So I've two vehicles. I have one compost vehicle and one edible vehicle. They start at 7:00am and then they are parked back on premise by 7:00p. If any of the food...the compost is all managed within a day. If any of the edible comes in after 2 or 3:00pm, that's what our storage coolers downstairs is for and that goes out the next cuz we've got get it to the community in time to prep dinner. Otherwise it's going to go to waste for them. Also we're working though a lot of agencies that don't have the fridge storage.

We've done food safety training but we would rather manage it for as long as possible. A, to save them on the storage costs and B, to ensure that it's of the highest quality that we can give it to them and it's served at the highest quality that we can predict to the best of our ability.

MANAGING RISK

RICH: So how do you look at your system? Like, what are the flaming hot risks that you try to manage every day?

ABIGAIL: The flaming hot risk of course your first one is food safety. So we don't take cooked rice. We don't take anything cooked with coconut milk. It has a high volatile right after it gets heated. It kind of like goes on this crazy spectrum of bacteria within almost 45 minuets.

RICH: So, don't eat cold curry on the street.

ABIGAIL: Really don't. But it's just one of those things that we know that's a hot point especially here in southeast Asia that's a lot of foods made with it. We do not take cooked seafood, at all. We do not take frozen shellfish, at all.

RICH: Because?

ABIGAIL: Because it's just, those are your biggest risk factor categories for sure. The next is I guess cultural sensitivity with the food a lot of Hala communities. A lot communities that wouldn't eat the food that we were given. So we spend a lot of time trying to match out. You bring a Thai family a box of bad Ghats, they don't know what to of with it so it's ending up in the landfill anyways. You bring Vietnamese refugee a box of baguettes, they thrilled. Same with we cater a lot of...yea, we cater a lot of post large Indian weddings. This is a huge Indian wedding hub. Pakistani refugees, Nepalese, Sri Lankan, all love it. But my Vietnamese are like whoa, why what is this? I don't want it. So that's how we deal with a lot of that.

Then the other hotspots are of course just being sensitive with the people that are receiving food. We want to treat them with dignity right?

GETTING STARTED

RICH: Did you start with one community and move out? Did you always do everything like it, how it started?

ABIGAIL: It started pretty much one community, one donor, two donors, two communities and now it's blossomed and it works. Now what we need are more vehicles. That's really our next step. So in our first, we're about a year and half old. Locally founded in March 2016. I've kind of looked at everything we've done still even almost up to this January as a pilot, as proof. Now, what we've been able to do is, we've been able to physically prove is that the food waste is there and that you know when I walk into a hotel and an executive chef says I have no food waste, that you do. You do and it doesn't matter if it's 10 kilos or 100 kilos, it's still food waste and the more on people I get on board, the more 10 kilos matters and so forth and so forth.

So I've proved the food is there and the waste is there and that it's not a hard process. Actually we've found that like some of the stewarding teams in hotels we're making their jobs easier because they have less, wet heavy garbage. Ya know.

RICH: Right, so they save money from that.

ABIGAIL: Tesco Lotus is built into their KPIs for the store managers to donating. Things like that. We've proven the food is there. We've proved that the process is not impossible and we've proved the need and the hunger is there and maybe there aren't staving people, but they will take the cost off that. They will take being remembered. It's kind of fun and that they enjoy the difference in their diet and the variety that we are able to bring. Halfway home I got 100 kilos of frozen salmon from a restaurant that was changing menu. We brought it out. We mad fish balls. They've never had salmon before. So it was like this really special moment for them. Ya know, so it's ya we're providing meals and nutrition, but we're also ya know just....

RICH: Like a nice night out in a way.

ABIGAIL: Yeah, it's like they see our truck coming and their like, "oh my god, maybe it's going to be a really cool desert today." Or something different than they have every day.

SETTING UP

RICH: Legally, how difficult was this? Were there laws in place? How open is the Thai society, Bangkok, a foreigner coming in and setting this up?

ABIGAIL: We do it before. We have a mixed Thai foreign board. We are locally registered. We are a Thai foundation. That process to get a local registration start to finish was bout 9 months and as we say, Phaeng mak, very expensive but well worth it. So Phaeng mak, mak. I'm the only westerner on staff. Even like my one American staff, she's half Thai, she grew up in a Thai household and she's fluent. I'm the only westerner on staff. I try to stay off the camera as much as possible and like when we do local news articles that it's featuring the Thai staff. In Thailand, as much as like I don't, there's also a respect with the foreign foundation.

Now for me, I'd also been here for four years. I'd also worked in hotels for four years and could speak a little bit of Thai was kind of able to win over respect and that a lot of our corporates that were going through most 5 star hotel executive chefs are European here. Right? So I set it up and then my Thai staff comes in with their Thai staff and knocks it down. Then working with the mixed refugees who are used to working with UN, with asylum access, which has a.... So they were pretty used to it already. Some of our biggest blockades have been, I don't want to say Thai, I want to say Southeast Asian here perception of what food waste is. Changing language over to surplus that it's not dirty.

I feel like culturally all over the world, we have this big problem where...Oh my god if we donate food you're going to sue us...everybody's going to get food poisoning. It's an Urban Legend essentially it really doesn't happen. One of my partner foundations has been operating in this fear for 14 years over 1 billion meals served and not a single claim. They've also been able to change the laws in Australia to get food donors under Good Samaritan. It's something that we're looking at doing here.

Right now, I offer contracts to each food donor that guarantees that we accept liability if there is an issue and we can do that cuz honestly, there isn't going to be an issue. I really firmly believe that.

RICH: You don't worry about it.

ABIGAIL: We do have global insurance, but I really firmly believe that we're not going to have an issue.

TRUSTING PROCESS

RIGH: Even though it's potentially the hottest thing, it's something that you don't worry about.

ABIGAIL: I mean I worry about it, but we practice ____ some standards. I'm _____ (9:15) certified. I have a full time food hygienist on staff. We don't take the right things. We train the people donating food. We trust our process.

RICH: So you trust your process.

ABIGAIL: We trust our process. We train our communities receiving food as well. It's not....there is nothing half-assed about this. It was really thought through. It's been really well thought through in other programs in the world. You trust your process and honestly, you can get food poisoning order at the table at a 5 star hotel just as easily as you can get it in street food, just as easy as any where in the world. So we trust our process just as much as you do sitting down at a restaurant and ordering a meal.

VOLUNTEERS

RICH: How do volunteers support your organization? Who makes the best...like, do you use volunteer on a regular basis? How are they part of your....

ABIGAIL: We done on couple..first off we take interns. Usually the interns are admin, are Facebook, social media, like doing cute little projects that we want to do that are itching in the back of our head, but like nobody had time to do a sliding scale, so our staff can see how close we are getting to our food capture goal. They bring a lot o f light and energy to the office to normally and so it's great to have some. So internships have functions really, really well for us. We've taken volunteers on web design and on different projects like that which functions pretty well and is fun.

We are having problems. I don't even know how to say it. We're absolutely having problems. We are having problems having people cancel last minute. We're having problems of people taking photos of the wrong thing and posting it on social media. Then we need to..

RICH: What's the background of your average volunteer? Are they Thai? Are they foreign?

ABIGAIL: College students born here, but maybe a foreign background is a huge section of the population. Thai people returning home is a huge section of the population. Then all of our refugees want to volunteer, which is amazing. So we kind of use refugees volunteers on site to help sort, pack and distribute. That works well. But they can't go out on the truck all day really.

We've also found some great success volunteer from spousal expats. So they're on a spousal visa, so they can't work, but they can only give so much time to it legally. It's complicated I guess finding good volunteer help is not easy.

RICH: What are some of the challenges that you face, like how you...because managing volunteers is a process. It really is. It's no different than budgeting. You ask for five people, you're going to get three. How do you, what's the process you try to create?

ABIGAIL: We've tried to create by month volunteer trainings, which happen right in this living room. Ten to fifteen kids come in, we pull out a wipe board, we sign them up for days. We go through food safety food standards, safe lifting, community sensitivity, all of that kinds of stuff. They sign up on the wipe board, we follow-up with email. Um, I learning that, that might not be a great process, so it's not enough and honestly, I would love something like what you do to help us managing volunteers. It's really... It's really hard man.

RICH: Yes.

ABIGAIL: I thought it was supposed to make my life better, but it makes it worse almost every single time.

RICH: That's the irony of volunteering.

CASH FLOW

RICH: So, how good are you with your cash flow? Like how in touch with you are and I found this out like two years ago I nearly spiked my non-profit. I had about a four month window and I mean we were headed straight for the earth. I realized there's a big difference between sales and cash flow. Like it's huge. So, how do you know that?

ABIGAIL: I do all the forecasting. I am on it. I am picky about receipts. I am watching it all the time. Know when I say that we have x-amount for this program, for this month. There is usually a buffer in there. I build buffers all over the place. I always when I look at fundraising, I forecast on the fact that what this person that's gonna to do this campaign for me, he's going to raise me a million Baht, I put in my forecast, 25,000 Baht. You know what I mean? I don't put anything in my forecast until I have ink on the paper. There's no pipe dreams in it.

RICH: I have three sheets. One that is current and this is what I booked and I have exact numbers for. There is realistic what I'm pretty confident I can sell through. The other is potential. This is not just the revenue side, but it's also how many people can I add. Like when they want a raise, I have to bake the raise in. That way I can figure out how many months do I have at present. I sort of hyperventilating under 6. I started loosing hair at 3. Sort of my doctorate at...
ABIGAIL: Yeah. When I do my end of 3rd quarter books, I mean I just...I just like to be hiding under my table with a bottle of wine going I have to fire everybody.

RICH: At least you don't end that sentence with again. Right?

ABIGAIL: Again, no. It never...and that's what buffers are about right? There's guarantee, their bonuses aren't guaranteed. Now are they all siting on my forecast like they're all going to happen at 100% at all times, yes. Then that gives me another, that gives me a whole another month lets say something goes horribly wrong, that gives me another month. There's things in there, there's stuff in there like we know that our refrigeration is often unkind. Or we're working on getting trucks in Kind now. But I still build my budget and forecast like I'm paying full price for that. That's a lot of ways that I manage it. By telling my staff that we have less money than we do.
SCALE

RICH: This give us the idea of scale. I think we'll close it out here. Everyone's like you got scale, you gotta do more. Bigger impact. More people. More trucks. More this, more that. How do you, how do you approach scale?

ABIGAIL: How do I approach scale? I mean...

RICH: Because this is a pilot right?

ABIGAIL: We're still in pilot and I'm like looking at the real thing like I've proven it. Now we know stuff like for every US dollar we spend I can provide 4 meals. That's the fuel I need for fundraising. Now I know that I've done operated for almost over a year and we haven't had any food poisoning cases. Now I can say that. Right? I can really say that so now I can sell it stronger and better. Chicken/egg is a huge problem in what I'm doing here. Do I have the truck waiting in the wings and the staff sitting there with nothing to pick up while I'm out pitching to hotels? Or do I get the hotels on board and tell them I can work wonders and then when they call me and say can you start on Tuesday and it's Monday and say, hey who can go buy a truck today and hire a staff. So we're kind of balancing on that right now. I'm at the point where I'm at capacity and I'm still selling and the program to more food donors.

What I'm saying is that I'm going to get another truck, which we are. In the beginning of 2018 and then we would like to start your program on this day or this day. I also don't pick up new communities and new food donors at the same time. For example, Hilton started on the first. Chatruim will start on the 15th. We've got a new recipient community starting on the 25th once I know that that's all there and ok.

Because so that's kind of the stuff that I'm doing. Just praying, there's a lot of praying. I say to the kids, I call my staff the kids, everyday I kind of walk in and put my purse down and I'm like alright, what are we doing to get to the end of the day. If we can get to the end of the day, we can get to the end of the week. If we can get to the end of the week, we can get to the end of the month. Then eventually we are going to get to the end of the year and if we just keep doing the right thing every day...and if we just keep communicating and if we just keep pushing ourselves, our other team members, our donors, our recipient communities appropriately and just a little bit, we're going to make progress.

If you're doing the right thing, the money is going to come. The stuff is gonna come. I know it feels like ______________(17:35) I talking to you just like my staff talk, like I know today felt really hard, but we did it. It wasn't impossible, it wasn't maybe graceful, but we got to the end of the day, so now when this problem comes up gain, we're going to be able to get to the end of the day with a little more grace. Then we're gonna be able to prove our numbers and then we're going to get more.

For more interviews from the "Entrepreneurs for Good" series, check out the playlist here.

Stay tuned for more clips and full interviews in the coming weeks.

by Rich

Know What You Want to Build, Iterate, & Build Community - Karen Farzam, wHub

In this episode of Entrepreneurs for Good, I speak with wHub founder Karen Farzam about the work that she has been engaged with developing a community of entrepreneurs in Hong Kong and in changing the perceptions of women (and girls) in STEM and tech through conversations with academics and families.

It is a journey that had no plan, has had several iterations, but over the course of the last few years has grown tremendously, and I hope you enjoy our conversation about the work that she is doing.

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quote

About the Entrepreneurs For Good Series

About Karen Farzam

Karen Contet Farzam is the co-Founder of WHub, Hong Kong’s biggest startup community. She is a community builder, connector and passionate about Tech and Startup.

Karen is a founder and board member of the FinTech Association of Hong Kong, international speaker (Vivatech, Web Summit, RISE,), a French Foreign Trade Advisor, ambassador of the FrenchTech, community leader for Techstars and mentor for several accelerator programs.

Follow Karen
Website: www.whub.io
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karen.farzam
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karenfarzam/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chleozam

About Rich

Follow Rich
Website: http://www.richbrubaker.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rich.brubaker
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richbrubaker
Snapchat: http://snapchat.com/add/richbrubaker
Instagram: https://instagram.com/richbrubaker
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/richbrubaker

Contact Rich
[email protected]

Full Interview Transcript

Welcome back everybody, Rich Brubaker. I'm here with Karen here, who has started a couple of organizations here in Hong Kong. A Hub platform for startup entrepreneurs, but also she started or was part or core to the woman's echo system here. Fantastic conversation about her own journey as an entrepreneur, but then also aspiring and learning from that process. So, thank you very much Karen, this has been fantastic.

KAREN: Thank you very much.

RICH: So thank you very much for joining us. I really appreciate your time. I know this is a busy city. You're a busy person. Do me a favor and give me a little of your background and what you do in Hong Kong.

KAREN: Ok, so I am French. I grew up in Tokyo and I'm an engineer, studied computer science. I moved back to Tokyo for JP Morgan to be an creative electric trader. Then moved to Hong Kong, switched to web development and build my own startup.

RICH: Before you made the jump, do you spend time with the ecosystem at all? Or was it a complete like there's a whole different pool and I'm going to jump in. What was your process to get into this?

KAREN: Basically, totally randomly we, the co-founder and myself, met a lot of entrepreneurs and they were so passionate about what they do that you know, we were like ok it seems they need a lot of help to recruit or to get new users, early adapters. How can wee help them based on the passion that they have? Because when you hear an entrepreneur, you want to help. You're totally into it. So that's why we build Whub

HONG KONG STARTUP SCENE

RICH: What are some of the things you've seen over the time since you started that because when you started it was a very different time. How have the needs changed? Was your first idea the right one?

KAREN: No, my first idea was definitely not the right one. We iterated a lot like every startup. You really need to be flexible, but in terms of the ecosystem. So when we started them it might have been maybe one event per week. Less than 10 co-working spaces. We didn't really know who was doing what. Which is really why we build Whub. We are not talking about syntax or edutech or anything, it was more just about tech to start with. People were saying that 3 years ago there was about 1,000-2,000 startups and on the platform we have like 1,700 startups. Just ya know, on our own platform. It means that it grew so much over 3 years, it's just amazing.

RICH: How many of those startups are going to be foreign backed? How many of them are going to be local,Hong Kong backed? Is there a difference between the two in terms of their own, like the access to resource or the challenge that they face?

KAREN: So when you are looking at the ecosystem you feel like there is about 50% local and 50% foreigners. I think we all face the same challenge. The difference is where you want to expand whether you want to go to China because you have your own connections or whether you want to go to Southeast Asia. Because at the end, Hong Kong is just a spring board for something else and a good place to ya know, start, iterate and test your product or service.

RICH: Why not just go into Shanghai, Beijing where they have a real deep....

KAREN: I agree. I think if your end goal is to target China, you need to go and start directly in China. But you know sometime its a matter of also connection, and who you meet that will lead you to once place or another.

WOMEN WHO CODE

RICH: So you are the founder of Woman Who Code. Tell me a little bit about what that is and why you started that.

KAREN: So basically I switched from you know, really financial background, into web development. I attended when I started a lot of web development events and there was like 50 guys and 2 women. So we were just really were wondering where all the girls were because there must be like more than that. That's why we founded Women Who Code.

RICH: So what is it..like how were you trying to promote, or what were you doing to maybe build the ecosystem and what's the output sense?

KAREN: Basically for Women Who Code is was really here in Hong Kong about bringing more women into web development. Because you know its the sectors that is really booming, a lot of job opportunities and a lot of women who were considering it. They wanted to have more information about it. So they came to us and that's where the knew their first started to code and learn about new things. So that's really how it got started. Then it was also going to universities and talking to students. Because it needs to change from there as well.

RICH: Ok, sorry. It's a little bit younger than say...what I would see in the press about women and tech and the challenges that women face.

KAREN: Yeah because Women in tech was more studied in Europe or US where you have more mature system, but here tech was just starting so it was a little bit different.

CULTURAL (&OTHER) BARRIERS TO WOMEN

RICH: So, what was some things that you found maybe in the education system, or in the culture or in general that were holding women back from getting into.

KAREN: I think at the end, we need to education the parents. You know that actually it's good to have your daughter try to code, maybe it's not for her and it's totally fine with it, but just to try and you know to think that it's not only for boys. I think that this thing even when it's high school and you have a coding class and suddenly it's like 99% guys. That's really a problem for me. I never felt any discrimination here in Hong Kong or in Asia. The truth is that you have less women studying STEM class anyway, in general. So it's more about telling them that they can try it, but it can also be for them. They need to have more roll models.

RICH: What do you think is behind that? Because in many it's up to the individual to sign up for the classes in school, right? So why do you think that there's a disparity? Is it?

KAREN: I think it's just this pressure that we have without even knowing it. It's always there and you feel like it's just not for you. I think that's one thing. It's how the media also advertise. When you have a women you know raising 20-30 million for a startups the title is like "a woman in tech raised like money." It's not like...whoa, there is a new startup with this amazing product that just got released. You know, it's all about the fact that it's a women. That for me is really an issue.

TACTICS FOR BETTER ENGAGEMENT

RICH: So, like at the tactic level, how are you trying to deliver that to the communities that you are trying to reach? Like what was the things that worked really well?

KAREN: I think going to talking to university works well. Even when you're talking to 50% and only one them you know after that is writing to you saying oh this was great I'm going to look into it. I was not sure I could try, but this is something that could change. You have the Woman foundation which is doing an amazing job. You have a lot of small communities that are really making a big impact. I just think that it takes time. It's difficult.

KNOWING WHEN TO ITERATE

RICH: So when you got started albeit with the hub or with the network, did you have a plan for either one? Like how, like what were the things that you started off doing and how did you know when you need to iterate?

KAREN: So for womanhood there was absolutely no plan. It was just like there must be more woman in tech or codding somewhere, let's try and grab them. Thanks to Facebook. So this was one thing.

For Whub, it was more like about really gathering a community and trying to showcase all this passion for entrepreneurs. Then we ya know expanded with like job opportunities. We did talent database with an event we were organizing and more partnership. It's always about you know, finding new way to reach more people.

BUILDING COMMUNITIES

RICH: How do you do that? You know because you mentioned Facebook. But in both cases there communities that are surrounding that for support. How did you, what were some of the things that you did that really worked to bring community into your cause or onto your platforms.

KAREN: That's a good question. That's a very good question. I don't know. We organized alot of events. We were very present within the different communities here in Hong Kong. There were like small communities, but they were all very fragmented. For us it was more like how can we bring it all together. Without doing what they were doing. How did we do that? I cannot have a real answer. It's time.

It's like ok, for example. I'm a runner and I think what makes a difference is being very consistent. I think it's exactly the same thing. You are consistent week after week. You keep trying. You keep pushing. You keep making new connections and trying to bring very great content. You need to make a difference. It's not just the talking, but really doing something that can help people, in real. I think that's really what makes a difference and really that why you know, people came to us and how we grew also.

RICH: Are there certain things that you have to remain consistent on all the time and some things that you can....

KAREN: There are some things that you can pivot. I mean for example, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. You need to try them and see. You cannot do it all. It's impossible. It's way too much work. So you need to try them and see which one will work. Which one won't work and for like which purpose. Then you can just push it so definitely you're not doing the same thing again. It's about really having KPI from the start knowing what you are going after from the beginning. Otherwise you will feel like you are always getting it.

EARLY LESSONS

RICH: Like if you just have Facebook, you're developing your community. What are the some of things you did early and look back like, oh wow that was really not helpful. But then what are the things you did that you actually started to learn. Like what were the key lessons from there?

KAREN: I think we tried a lot of different things, different type of inspiration of talks or tagging and some of them really didn't work. I think also in terms of blogging, so like we switch at tome point to medium instead of having our own we have help also to promote. I think it's really having a strong branding that people can recognize from the start. And it's evolve (??? 10:46) When I look at the first design of the website I'm like oh my God!

LEARNING FROM FAILURE

RICH: So, need to learn. What was the biggest I mean, learn from failure. What was your failure that you think that you learned the most from?

KAREN: I think sometimes you need to learn to say no. Because at the end of the day, it's just 24 hours a day. I have two kids and you cannot say yes to every event, every coffee, every lunch, every new connection. You cannot do it. So you need to learn to say no. You need to learn to delegate not to do everything by yourself. Because when we start, I mean when I start my co-founder so we really doing everything. Which was great because it's the best way to learn and to you know, to try to get it right. But then you know you grow, you have a team so something's you need to let go, you need to trust people they do it in a different way. You need to say no.

RICH: What does balance mean to you?

KAREN: The good thing I think about what I do now compared to trading is that I can do it from anywhere. So I just my laptop and that's it. So I can go back home at 7, spend time with the kids and go back to work at 9. So this is really, really great in terms in finding balance and finding the right time to work. So I think now with new technology, you can definitely find it.

ADVICE TO ASPIRING ENTREPRENEURS

RICH: For anyone like watching this video, we have aspiring entrepreneurs, we have want-trepreneurs, we have mid career entrepreneurs who are trying to make their way through the weeds. What are like a few pieces of advice that you would give to someone about getting through it? About growing? About, ya know achieving, driving impact?

KAREN: I think first is that when you're an entrepreneur you have a lot of people giving you advice. At the end you need to make up your own mind. it think that is one thing that is very important. Always list listen, but in the end it's your decision and you have to be actually liable for it. So that's really one thing.

Second thing, whatever you have in mind it's going to take more time. Whatever you have in mind. But it's good to have a target, ya know? That's the second thing.

The third thing is, it's really a rollercoaster. I mean you know people say it all the time I know. But it's true. Sometimes like oh my God it's amazing things are going so well and sometimes like why am I doing this? It's never going to work. So I think what really makes a difference is to be surrounded by the right people. It's life changing. My co-founder is also my best friend. My team its people that, we've met we had relation with and really grow together. There is a huge trust. We're really going in the same direct. That's what is the most important.

It's really the people that surround you. When you are surrounded by amazing advisors or mentors or people that are really pushing you up, that makes a lot of the different. I know it's what everybody says, but it's true that and one thing I'll tell you that you cannot do alone. It's so hard. Being able to find the right partner for this is really key.

GETTING GOOD ADVICE

RICH: You mentioned advisors,. You mentioned giving good advice. Can you give me some insight to that? Because there is a lot of good advice that's actually not applicable. How do you find your mentors? How do you find your advisors or do you really just pick and choose?

KAREN: It's really about your good feeling. The one advisor that I have, the first day I met him it's like we clicked so well. It was such a connection. He really saw exactly what I was going to do, the missing, where we were going to be in 5 years, the whole plan I had in my head, he saw it right away. So we have a really like deep connection. I don't know it just works super well.

RICH: Then how much do you, how much information do you get about the business so he can make a good decision for you or give you, like do you give him the financials or...

KAREN: Yeah, I can share everything. You need to trust people. Also the thing is that when you're talking to and advisor or somebody who's like, they're' not as emotional about your business as you are. Because for you everything is so personal. So they can...how do you say in English when you step back and it's good sometimes to speak to people that can step back from your business and say, ok take a deep breath an look at the whole picture. Where do you want to go? What do you want to do? That's also what is important because when you're working on it like all the time, sometimes you just need to breath a little bit.

RICH: If you're gut doesn't agree with what your advisor say?

KAREN: I won't do it?

RICH: You won't do it?

KAREN: No because at the end, it's still my company right? I mean me and my co-founder of course, but at the end we take the decision. So advisor are there to advise, they are not there to run your company. So at the end as I was saying, it's your decision.

RICH: Any last words you want to give to our aspiring entrepreneurs?

KAREN: I think being an entrepreneur is just really great, but I think also we need more people that join startups. Not all of us have the right ideas, the right time, and even though its really exciting to build your own company, there are still a lot of companies that are recruiting and that need talent and still be part of an amazing adventure by also joining a startup. It think that's also really important as I was saying it's all about the team. Like me, myself alone....like it just would never be this. It's because of the people I'm surrounded with. It's really important.

RICH: Anything you would say differently to a woman entrepreneur? Or an aspiring woman entrepreneur?

KAREN: It doesn't matter if you are a woman or not. So that I think that's really the first thing is like just don't take it...right now, it's good to be a woman because right now there is a lot of things to apply for, diversity so lets just embrace it and you know, go for it.

RICH: Thank you very much for your time.

KAREN: Thank you very much.

RICH: That was fantastic.

For more interviews from the "Entrepreneurs for Good" series, check out the playlist here.

Stay tuned for more clips and full interviews in the coming weeks.

by Rich

Change the World Everyday | Arch Wongchindawest, Socialgiver

In this episode of Entrepreneurs For Good, I speak with Arch Wongchindawest, founder of the Bangkok based platform Socialgiver, who shares with me his vision for where philanthropy is broken and what he is trying to do to built a better path for financial sustainability in the third sector.

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This interview is about wanting to change the world, being surrounded by great people, and learning (fast) from mistakes

About the Entrepreneurs For Good Series

About Arch

Named to Forbes “30 under 30” list, Arch Wongchindawest is a force for innovation inside Thailand’s burgeoning social enterprise sector.

A former consultant for the UN Development Program and UN Environment Program in Asia Pacific, Wongchindawest has launched several highly successful social enterprises, including IDEACUBES, Food 4 Good and Wipe the Tide.

In 2013, he co-founded Social Giver, an online platform that allows consumers to shop and donate a portion of funds to charitable causes. Social Giver recently won first place in the Singtel-Samsung mobile app challenge in Indonesia.

Follow Arch and Socialgiver:
Website: https://th.socialgiver.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/boomw
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/archw/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/socialgiver
Twitter: https://twitter.com/socialgiver

About Rich

Contact Rich
[email protected]

Full Interview Transcript

I'm here today with Arch from Social Giver in Bangkok, Thailand. I just had a phenomenal discussion about what he's been trying do in converting the mindset around how you give. How to build an organization and like getting through the headaches, but maintaining that vision. Making sure your impact and your revenue align that you can have an achieve everything you want. So, thank you very much Arch for your time. This has been fantastic.

ARCH WONGCHINDAWEST - SOCIAL GIVER

RICH: Tell us a little, tell me a little about yourself and then Social Giver.

ARCH: My name is Arch Wongchindawest. I am from Thailand. I run a social enterprise called Social Giver. We are a lifestyle and travel company that raises funds for local charities. So we work with over 160 leading brands in Thailand from hotels, restaurants, bars, activities, events, airlines and we work with them to convert their best services into charitable contributions.

THE BIG CHALLENGE

RICH: What was the big challenge? What was the idea that was, wait a second...we've got a problem here and we need to fix it.

ARCH: I started off working in the social sector. I raised funds for a lot of charities and I noticed that when I raise funds for one charity, it most of the time takes away money from another charity in the sense that someone who just donated money, would not donate again to another charity. So I try to figure out a better solution. What I was trying to find out was how do we convert this, ya know, consumer spending power, which was huge and have a portion of that become new revenue for the social sector to help sort of grow the sector that has been overly reliant on donations alone.

TURNING DONORS INTO BUYERS

RICH: How have you been reaching out to potential buyers then? Because you are turning a donor into a buyer. How do you reach them and how are you changing that mindset? That they are not just donating, that they're actually getting a value for the product.

ARCH: Yeah, actually that's a difficult question that we have to sort of answer because, ya know our motto is quite new. When we first tell people that you buy on our website and you get the best deal and the business doesn't take any money, they donate it to charity. It sounds unbelieveable. Like people have the tendency to not believe it. So, that's a big one of the challenge that, ya know, that we have to overcome. So we usually end up having to explain the whole idea, like with the capacity. Like if they don't use it they're going to waste it so they'd rather give it to you and, ya know raise funds for charity or then not use it at all.

RICH: On that note, I'm even thinking usually, there's a lot of almost push back right now if you're profiting off of this space in any way. Like, the Dan Pollotta book the Uncharitable. Like you take 30%....you're taking a free thing and then you're selling it. How many people question you on that? Even in the industry and how do you respond to that?

ARCH: There are definitely a few, but as..there are I think equally like people who think that 30% is a lot and there are people who think 30% is to little. Usually the finance ones will think 30% is to little. The social ones, the ones that are usually donating money will think that 30% is al lot, then we would just have to explain to them, hey, like when you go on holiday, how many percent of that goes to charity and....not a lot. What we are offering is 70 as opposed to almost zero, which is actually a much better deal if you look at it from a consumers point of view.

The bigger problem that we have actually is not when people understand the model an question, but it's when people don't understand it and make a judgment. As for example, they see oh donate profit to charity, they probably going to donate 1% or something. Or someone who would just see tomorrow and think hey, they're trying to use donation to market these businesses. So they don't realize that actually these business are giving away their service for free, but they don't know that because they haven't read it, but they are making a judgment call right in advance because this is a new model. But they don't know it 's a new model. They just think it's the same as everyone trying to sort of promote. Trying to do good.

CURRENT SIZE AND IMPACT

RICH: How big are you guys now?

ARCH: Our team is 12, 12 people. Sort of about subscribers we have 68,000 subscribers. Our Facebook fan page we have around 40,000 fans. We've just started sort of tying to build our Instagram page up and mostly our Instagram is posting nice photos from the businesses. We have around like 4,200 fans/followers.

RICH: Then how many deals? How many transactions do you have on an average week? A month?

ARCH: So right now, we have like more than 160 business and the deals that we have live on our website should be around 100 right now. We don't have that many..as much transactions per month as I would have liked, but we're growing continuously. We sort of like year on year we are doing pretty well around 300-500 % growth. So, we're sort of, yeah, trying to push that up more.

SOCIAL MEDIAL & ENGAGEMENT

RICH: A lot of charities particularly struggle with how do I create social. Like I only got 32 likes, I only have 100 likes, like what does it matter? What were some of the techniques you use that you realize like wow, we got 50 more we got 5% and not just they click through. What were the things you learned through social?

ARCH: Well, it always changes.

RICH: It is a bit of a whack amole right?

ARCH: Right. But, I think that the most important thing is quality content and I mean its...it's an easy word, but it's one of the most difficult things to do.

RICH: It depends upon who is....Social Giver or something else.

ARCH: Yeah. Having quality content is probably one of the biggest factors to getting people to share. Then when people do share, like how do you get, how do you make sure they like your page as well. So that's more difficult.

RICH: So if you look at the content that you put out and you said it has to be good content. Now obviously that is in the context of social givers own business model. I talk a lot about you shouldn't put crying babies as the lead image, right? You should inspire people.

ARCH: Although that does work. But we try to avoid it for a lot of charities that actually works very well. In Thailand especially, a lot of charities go through..like with drama. They create drama. Like, this big rich company is about to close down this house, which is like could be a museum, let's raise funds for it. That raises loads of funds. Or like a charity that has been working to protect elephants is now 60 million bhat in debt we need to close down. Then suddenly, people donate like 100 million bhat to it. So, you know what I don't know. I think these ya know sad stories sometimes work and work very well.

RICH: But can you do it over and over and over or can you only use it once?

ARCH: I think if you over due it, like people would sort of like kick you for it.

CONTENT (STRATEGY)

RICH: How do you then position content? How do you try and inspire people to be engaged?

ARCH: We, ya know, I think like there was a time when I thought about these two ways of advertising and the first way is promoting the cause. Sort of like if I promoted the cause, I would be targeting people who already cared .

The second way is promoting the deals. I think like the reason we decided to go with the second option is because I felt that by promoting the deals, what we are essentially doing is getting people who might not have cared to suddenly now donate money to charity. When they do, and we provide them the content of ,ya know you're last vacation put a child through school and this is what happened. I'm betting that this will have an impact on them, on them becoming a socially conscious consumer in the future. So, we see this as more of a long term bet where we're building sort of the community of people who will eventually care more about society. That's sort of what I'm very interested in, like creating change.

WHY SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP?

RICH: Why choose this? What's going on here that made you say I have to do this?

ARCH: Um, I think it came more because like I decided that this is what I wanted to do with my life. Like, many, many years back before I joined the social sector to help other organizations, I sort of felt like I wanted my work to be meaningful because it is something that I would have to do as a majority of the time that I spent of my life. So I sort of, my goal or my mission was I wanted to change the world. So I, so I look for ways that I thought would be best for changing the world and I think I believe that this is it.

RICH: What are some of the headaches that you've had that...lets' just say the ones you've learned the most from, but only in reflection.

ARCH: Actually I think my biggest headache was building this model. Because we needed to build a model that was a win/win/win for every party that got involved. This sort of development of this took me about 2 years. Ya know, at the time I was doing other things, helping other organizations and getting paid by other organizations to sort of consult for them. This was sort of something that we tested out and redeveloped and rebuilt.
The biggest headache when we were building this actually besides the model now that I mention, is the website. In the beginning we outsourced the development and we had to build 3 different websites before it was something we could use.

RICH: Was it because you over engineered it?

ARCH: Yeah.

RICH: I have the same problem. What do you got planned going forward? What do you hope to achieve?

ARCH: So, we are planning to launch an app in November. Right now we have an app, but it's a sort of mobile version of our website, but...

RICH: HTML5?

ARCH: Honestly I don't know. But we have a native app coming on the iPhone and Android in November. So I am really looking forward to that because we've sort of seen like most of our users shifting to using our website on their phones. So now, around 65% use Social Giver on their phones. So, I think we're sort of moving in an a direction is that our customers are using us more. We have a few pending deals from big companies that we're planning to close soon. It might be possible that we might have a car on our platform.

MOTIVATION

RICH: That would be cool. What keeps you going? I mean you got a bunch of headaches. You're building an enterprise. You got staff...they're not even working over here! They're just eating chips in the middle of the interview! So what keeps you going on a daily basis? Like entrepreneurship is hard.

ARCH: I think the biggest thing is having a great team. Our team is actually very cool.

RICH: I can tell!

ARCH: As you can see.

RICH: That's good, that's good.

ARCH: When you have a great team and everyone is sort of working together toward one really cool goal, that sort of is inspiring by itself. Us having that ya know, big vision that we want to change the world. Sort of seeing that, you know what this is possible from what we've done so far and from what we've achieved so far, sort of gives us hope that ya know, that we might actually get there. But it's still a risk.

(SOCIAL) ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN BANGKOK

RICH: So I have a question just generally of what's happening in Bangkok with social entrepreneurialism. Ya know, Singapore's been a hub. Bangkok's tried to be a hub. Shanghai we've got a little bit. So what's happening here in Bangkok. How's the echo system, is it more Thai than foreign, is it more foreign that Thai? Like' what's happening here?

ARCH: I think the social enterprises are mostly Thai's doing it. But the sort of tech startups. There's a lot of foreigners coming in to do tech startups here in Thailand. I think social enterprise in Thailand is growing, but it's not..I think it was growing, but it might have stalled a little bit in the past two-three years, two years.

RICH: Because of?

ARCH: I think that's just a lack of success with the existing social entrepreneurs. I feel like we don't get enough support from the government. Not even as much as startups get. So, a lot of social entrepreneurs have sort of jumped into startups instead.

RICH: Do you consider yourself a social entrepreneur or a tech startup?

ARCH: We are both. Lucky for us!

RICH: So you got the good and you got the good.

ARCH: We have both. I think, yeah, I think that!

HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD...

RICH: That's really a romantic idea that sucks a lot of people in. Their like I'm going to change the world too. So if you have a viewer here that is like, I want to change the world...what would you tell them to do? Because wanting to change the world and changing the world is very different things. What are three things or five things that if you're going to get into this space, you have to know and do as daily practice.

ARCH: I think the biggest thing is asking yourself what would you give to change the world. A lot of the times you're going to come up with, come up against challenges that you never thought you'd have to face.

RICH: There's a story in that!!!

ARCH: Yes, there is! Yeah,

RICH: You're on video, why don't you tell it?

ARCH: Sort of you need to be able to, ya know, pick yourself up and sort of remember that hey, this is what you'd said you'd do. Really believe or really, yeah, really believe that you will actually sacrifice all these things for it. So that's one thing.

The second thing is I think you need to test out the idea with a lot of people and that sort of involves talking to as many people as you can. When I started out, I thought man this is such a great idea. I'm not going to tell anyone about it because someone else is going to steal it. Then, ya know, up to the point I was like damn, I can't keep doing this anymore ya know, I gotta tell people. Then I realized that the more people you tell, the more people want to help. So we get like loads of people coming in offering help all the time.

That sort of is to test whether one, you're idea is good enough yet. Two, whether you can find enough sort of super fans or advocates who will help make this happen. Because I think on of the biggest factor to a startup success is how viral could it be and how viral could it be is sort of dependent on how likely that it is that someone will recommend you to their friends. Sort of telling people is the best way to test that. Then you know when you get more and more people sort of telling more people about Social Giver, then you sort of see that, yey, this is starting to stick. People are starting to talk about it. That's the second thing.

The third thing is to test if you are impact and revenue model works and if its aligned.

RICH: Are you actually helping anybody, right? If not, get out!

ARCH: Ha, right. If your impact model does not work, then just become a business. Then you can donate your profits. If your revenue model doesn't work, just become an NGO. If both of them work and if both of them are aligned, then you can run a social enterprise. Sort of having these two be aligned is very difficult actually, much more difficult than you'd imagine.

RICH: And if none of them work, go get a job.

ARCH: Right!

RICH: That's great. Thanks very much.

For more interviews from the "Entrepreneurs for Good" series, check out the playlist here.

Stay tuned for more clips and full interviews in the coming weeks.

by Rich

Building a Vegan Movement in Hong Kong | Peggy Chan, Grassroots Pantry

In this episode of Entrepreneurs For Good, I interview Peggy Chan, the founder Managing Director and Executive Chef of Grassroots Pantry, about her mission to bringing the vegan movement to Hong Kong through a strong ethos, her passion for food, and delivering an amazing menu that reminds her customers of their favorite food memories.

As always, I hope you are inspired and engaged by the conversation!

Peggy's story is one of a passion for food, and the commitment to delivering on that passion every day

About the Entrepreneurs For Good Series

About Peggy Chan

Peggy Chan is the founder, Managing Director and Executive Chef of Grassroots Pantry, a homespun restaurant in Sheung Wan, Hong Kong serving innovative plant-based cuisine with the highest standards of hospitality. Through Grassroots Pantry, Peggy shares her passion for organic produce and supporting local sustainable agriculture by educating the public about the issues that face our food systems today. Grassroots Pantry, as a result, has grown to be more than just a restaurant: it is a highly regarded platform that highlights pressing issues and encourages all to make a difference through action and collaboration, while providing a world-class dining experience.

Since opening in 2012, Grassroots Pantry has enjoyed great success, community support and media coverage in publications such as CNN Travel, Cathay Pacific Discovery Magazine, Travel & Leisure SE Asia and National Geographic India, and Peggy remains determined to create an independent business that will continually challenge the way diners view food production and consumption.

Follow Peggy and Grassroots Pantry:
Website: http://grassrootspantry.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peggygp55
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peggy-chan-a15a1649/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chefpeggychan
Twitter: https://twitter.com/peggychan55

About Rich

Contact Rich
[email protected]

Full Interview Transcript

RICH: Welcome back everybody. Rich Brubaker here with my friend Peggy from Grassroots. An amazing story about a young executive chef who has opened up a very unique place here in Hong Kong that serves only plant based foods. We speak about her journey, what drives her, how she stays humble and...thank you very much. The food is amazing.

Peggy thanks for meeting with us. Tell me a little about yourself as a individual and also Grassroots,which we are sitting in here.

PEGGY: Sure, thank you for having me. My name is Peggy. I am the executive Chef and founder of Grassroots Pantry, also managing director. We are a five year old vegan vegetarian organic restaurant. We source as much as possible locally and over 90% of our ingredients are certified organic. I've been an avid sustainable consumer or conscious consumer for the past 17 years, so that my lifestyle. So for me it's about how do I balance my food intake and nutritionally but also create food that is fun, interesting, and innovative.

RICH: How does that work in a city like Hong Kong where consumption is at a whole another level. Why did you choose this city to get started?

PEGGY: The challenge was really to take on what the city needed. The city that I grew up in, the city that I know and that I've worked in for many years. Take that challenge on and really to offer, offer our city and community something that is different.

RICH: How did you come into this?

PEGGY: Well, along with what I was doing in hotels in corporate, I was always on the back of my mind really wanting so badly to do something about the food industry and what was or raise awareness about what was going on thin the food industry. So back then, 12 years ago, was when I first read an article on Gourmet Magazine. That was in 2005 and that was the first article that had actually showed me what food was and where food came from. That was the first time I'd heard about Monsanto and genetically modified organisms. That really led me to do my research.

Throughout University in Switzerland I was continuously doing my research and figuring out what was going on with the meat industry, watching gorilla films. It was always in the back of my head even though I was working in corporate, I would be talking to my colleagues. They would ask me why I was vegetarian and I would tell them, do you know that? How cows are actually raised these days? No, well they're being pumped with RB/GH growth hormones. Do you know any of this? No. It's scary.

RICH: Why didn't you just become an activist for ya know for the human society, an existing NGO? Why didn't' you go that route? Why go into a restaurant business?

PEGGY: I really thought that I was going to leave the industry for good and go into academics and go into social work. Which is very normal for a lot of people, but I knew that I had my passion was really and my career ya know. Everything that I've honed for 12 years was in food and beverage and my craft is culinary. It's hard to leave all of that when, you know, it's kind of like a part of you.

I decided that after my Eat, Pray Love moment of traveling to Bali and India and everything, I really just felt that there is a way for me to do this. I can combine my love for culinary and running restaurants with my passion and activism for sustainable agriculture and combine that together and make Grass Roots Pantry my first pantry business and something that is more of social entrepreneurship base.

RICH: When you set this up, I mean the entire menu is completely Vegan, what were some of the core principals when you said you were going to build this restaurant that you had to adhere to and how challenging...what was the opportunity with all the challenges of sticking to those principals?

PEGGY: When we opened Grass Roots 5 years ago, we weren't opening it to become a vegan restaurant. It was only over the years and last year was when I decided after watching cowspiracy was when I,not realized that I really decided that.

RICH: Because you knew, but you like that was it.

PEGGY: Exactly. It was getting that push in. These food documentaries are so crucial to getting people to just, ya know do something. Plastic Oceans as well. So I really, with that we I decided to get rid of all the dairy. Not that we used a lot anyway, I just said we'll get rid of it overnight. I think many times when you're an restaurant operator and a chef with a big ego, you do what you want to do, but you fail to see what the market wants. If I made those decisions overnight and I made all these like funky stuff all wrong, all ya know cold foods and you know cold press all very like too hippy and stuff. I think It would deter people from trying.

RICH: Because whether they think... I mean to me it's like tofu. There's a preconceived notions that you can break through. How did you...like what was your process for once you knew that it was a problem, how did you then create a menu or how did you look at that part of the business.

PEGGY: In order for us to get our consumers to...our customers to really feel like they are a part of that experience, I wanted to create a menu that was something they could recognize. So let's say if I were to make a Thai dish, I would make it as authentic as possible but give it those Grassroots tweaks. Which is to make it plant based, super food laced, all wholesome foods, 100% organic, all of that. So when they eat it, they're like oh, I remember this flavor, oh I remember that. But actually it's actually something so much more healthier than you would normally get. So like one of the examples that we do is popcorn chicken that we do which is super popular here. It is my memory from middle school after school we would go to KFC and buy these buckets of popcorn chicken and pop them in our mouths.

So the taste and the memory and the flavor and fragrance, all of that, just made me realize that I can recreate that with an ingredient called hedgehog mushroom. Just batter it, toss it in galangal powder and there you go. So everyone who comes here they eat it are like this is just like chicken.

RICH: So are you trying to fool them? Like the beyond burger it's actively trying to fool you so that you'll just make the switch more readily. But how much for you is just looking at the food and going this just makes amazing food, but the flavor speaking for themslevs and hopefully....the tica I just had, **** amazing, how much is just you looking through food and this is what I can do and I know that this will be amazing. How much is people is people like pop corn chicken and I'm going to created it and fool everybody and they're going to keep coming back?

PEGGY: I wouldn't use the word fool though. I'm proposing an alternative. So actually we have a catering arm called The Alternative Caterer. What I'm doing is really proposing you a different option as what you would normally have and still have it taste just as good. You're experience won't change whatsoever. You can still bring your friends who are meat here and everyone can have their own meals, different style of food. We can have India, Thai, Italian, Chinese, all on the same table at the same time. But you'll will experience something that is memorably.

RICH: What are the best ways for you to break through the noise of what's happening here in Hong Kong food and dining. How do you get your message out and how do you attract new consumers that are outside your friend's circle, the people you are actively going after? You need the masses to come here to make sure you have a stable business? Is it Facebook, is it events, is it speaking, is it everything? What's worked well for you as a story teller?

PEGGY: When we were smaller, social media definitely worked, but now that we are at the stage of business, our public relationships team really does help us give us a push. But most importantly, I think it's the messaging, it needs to be consistent. So no matter what channel you use, the message needs to be consistent. So we do this thing called the Collectives Table. It's an initiative we started a year ago and the whole idea is to get, ya know the restaurant is great as a platform to touch to the community, our guests. Change the ways that they think.

So most of our guests who come here, they are not vegetarian/vegan. But the collectives table is really to tap within, infiltrate within the industry so that we can get the suppliers, the chefs, ya know the big restaurants, the corporates to start changing their systems, system change. So what we do is challenge them to cook plant based over one special dinner and part of the proceeds goes to a certain charity. We created a lot of buzz, a lot coverage for them because everyone is talking about plant based food now, vegetarian, putting more like wholesome foods on your menu. So we kind of help them as well tweek their image to the public and vice versa.

So we're doing it globally and we've been able to successfully change some of the chef's, like not purposely, but they are so inspired. Through that pop up, through that collaboration, they've been able to feel so inspired that they will change, maybe the percentage plant based verses meat dishes have shifted.

RICH: What are the big challenges that you face? Like day to day, like your vision perspective. What are the challenges you are facing and how do you get through them everyday? How do you wake up like alright look, we've got all these problems and we can get through it?

PEGGY: Well, the biggest problem in this industry no matter where you are, big corporate hotels, or small startups...people. We are a human intensive human based industry where everything is based on communications. That is always a problem and we have a massive shortage of qualified skilled workers in this industry right now because no one wants to go into food and beverage. Noone wants to go into hospitality. So that is one thing.

RICH: How do you fix that? Robots? Right!!

PEGGY: Gosh, how I would fix that is really just to go back internally and say how do we become better. How do we attract quality staff? We have to be role models for what we do so if we...we say all these things like...we do all these things, but we're not really good with our work ethics and even if I attract great people they would see us as they're just ya know, it's just all poster, messaging. So I first of all make sure that my team, the ground team, the skeleton team is strong and they are ya know, their ethos is exactly like mine that if I say segregate your ways, you have to segregate your ways. That has taken a lot of time. Like 2 years ago was not like this. There were a lot of chefs who came in and there were multiple shortcuts. So it takes time to build.

So that's one way that we're tackling why, how do I wake up in the morning and feel 100% to go to work and continue what I do? I see everything with a bigger picture and the bigger picture here is we need to do something about the system here.

RICH: What inspires you about the food sector right now?

PEGGY: What gets me the most excited is really to be a part of that system change. So because I've worked in food and beverage for 17 years, it's really knowing the industry from inside out and knowing how to fix it, know how to change it. Of course, I don't know everything around the world, but I'm starting in Hong Kong.

RICH: How do you measure your successes? How do you measure impact?

PEGGY: That's a good question. People have their conceptions about you a certain level. To me it's all about my confidence within. I don't need someone else to tell me who I am or whether I'm doing well or not. As long as I feel confident and comfortable with the correct feedback and being open to accepting feedback, staying humble with humility and then just focusing on doing better than I have before the previous day. Then I know I've done my job well.

RICH: What advice would you give to a young woman about how to be yourself, get it done,...?

PEGGY: One of the things the words that was used on a chef's table, I don't know if you watched it, but Chef Nikiama, she uses the word, it's a Japanese word Kreashi, which means to allow the negative energy that people give you drive you to prove them wrong. I mean that sounds reactive, but actually if you have that mentality all the time, it can become proactive and become a part of you. So, let any doubt, anything that is negative that enters you be produced back as something productive and positive.

For more interviews from the "Entrepreneurs for Good" series, check out the playlist here.

Stay tuned for more clips and full interviews in the coming weeks.

by Rich

Jumping from Corporate into Social Entrepreneurship - Pat Dwyer | Entrepreneurs For Good

A few years back, I met Pat Dwyer, founder of The Purpose Business, at a friend's conference in Singapore. We were on the same panel, and we had a BLAST sharing our experiences and insights to the crowd, and given neither of us were invited back to speak again it is safe to say that we left a lasting impression on the crowd.

This interview is no different. It is a pretty raw discussion about entrepreneurship, starting with Pat's decision to leave her role as Sustainability Director at one of the leading hospitality groups and covering a range of topics that flowed.

It is a high energy discussion, and one that I am comfortable will leave a lasting impression on those viewers who are aspire to enter this space or are already in it and looking to be inspired to get through their day by seeing how Pat is developing an organization that brings a lasting impact to the challenges that she sees faced in the Asia region.

This interview is about finding purpose, scaling impact, and believing in the tools and capacity of entrepreneurs to change the world

About the Entrepreneurs For Good Series

About Pat Dwyer

Pat Dwyer has fifteen years sustainability leadership experience, most recently as Global head of CSR & Sustainability for ShangriLa Hotels & Resorts.

She holds a BA in European Studies from Ateneo de Manila University and an MA in Globalisation and Governance from the University of Birmingham. She just completed a Certificate for Transformational Leadership, at the University of Oxford SaÏd Business School under the World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders Programme.

Pat brought ShangriLa to the forefront of responsible tourism operations, making it the only Asian hotel group to be recognized in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. She developed programmes across 89 hotels in 22 countries covering a broad spectrum including carbon management, diversity, environment stewardship and employee engagement. She equipped over 40,000 colleagues to understand sustainability issues through a training module and worked with local organisations to benefit more than 30,000 children globally. Previously, Pat was the first CSR head of Ayala Land, Inc. in the Philippines.

Follow Pat and The Purpose Business:
Website: http://thepurposebusiness.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TPurposeB/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patdwyertpb/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/tpurposeb

About Rich

Contact Rich
[email protected]

Full Interview Transcript

RICH: I'm here today with Pat Dwyer who is with the Purpose Business. She's come out of corporate 2.5 years ago. Jumped into her own thing. Didn't have plan, but definitely has attacked the world. This is a fantastic interview. You will...you don't have to, you will like, share and comment. So thank you very much Pat. This has been fantastic. We hope you, we know you will, so stay tuned.

BACKGROUND

RICH: So do tell us about yourself. What you do and why you love doing it in the city.

PAT : So the last time I saw you was when I did that job that was 7.5 years with Shangri-La. Then started my own business. Why did I do it? Why didn't I do it sooner I guess, is a bigger thing. The premise is really if I could do it with one with a massive team of people, imagine doing it for so many more. Basically said right. We need more Asian stories in sustainability and that's what we are as a team that works in Asia-Pacific. We are lucky enough o have landed some iconic brands, mostly in Hong Kong and the Philippines.

Would I change anything of what we did? I am not an entrepreneur, so I guess the biggest thing or like if there are students listening, go get your entrepreneurial degree. I never had myself as a business owner. I'm used to working in big organizations, whatever they may be, nonprofits and all that.

RICH: So how did that feel. You used to I need to do computer.

PAT : Yeah, it's nuts. There's no chart for this. There is no kind of manual for it. For constant learning, but I think the number one thing I've learned is to surround yourself with people who are experts, who are much better than you. There is a professional heads I'm selling anyway.

TAKING THE LEAP

RICH: Why did you choose 2.5 years ago to make the jump? What was your catalyst to leave? What was probably a really cushy job, why would you jump out of that and into something you knew nothing about in a sense a product you have to develop, fine-tune it....what made you....

PAT : Go through the trouble of.....I guess I called my company the reason why I did it, which is purpose. It sounds trite, but we're lucky to have landed that website then. But, you feel like you've done all that you could changing the mother ship isn't always easy and I've been blessed with an amazing support top down, sideways, and all that, but it was time to kind of do more of this with a bigger set of team and beneficiaries and you know the real change you wanted to see. You can say you've probably done all that you could at the time you could and it was the perfect time to leave. If I didn't leave then, I think I would have spiraled in a different way, and that's, you know, that's not good for you. And you know what they say about failing fast and failing cheap, I think that was the part....

RICH: Failing cheap in Hong Kong?

PAT : Well, there are ways! Next up. No, but there are ways to kind of do that in the most minimal ways possible. I was not going to wait any longer to kind of go and try that. So trying that at that time was perfect.

RICH: Did you start with partners? Did you start by yourself? Did you have your first client in hand? Or was it really like...I've gone as far as I can with this organization. I've gone as far as I can with sustainability. I know I have to go and chart a new path. Like how much had you done in advance and looking back, was it enough?

PAT : I think the market is ready. Was ready then. Any earlier I would have been starving. So, if I did it now, there's too many, too many consultant in this space and too many good ones like expertise and all that. Did I start with partners? Lets say, not being an entrepreneur, you surround yourself with people who are better than you in certain aspects. I knew what I could do, but I knew who I needed to go to for help. So there were people who helped me think through what that was going to look like. I used my notice period to kind of set all that up. Most people would say, why don't you moonlight and keep your day job and stay sane and pay the bills and then shift it once you've already got a market for it. I didn't have that luxury and I guess what I've done it differently, sure. But nothing has failed fast and cheap since then. So, we've learned our lessons in a fairly cost-efficient way I would say.

RICH: And just immediate, when you made the jump, what did you think it would be and how different was it?

PAT : I have no idea. . I think I had no expectations of what it would look like. The only expectations were are you going to open a hot desk or you going to be co-working? All the physical expectations were there so I guess in a good way, that was easy to handle. Anything you did was more than what was expected. There are certain things that you don't expect, like the way clients behave, good and bad. The way decisions are being made, how fast, how slow.

I guess, I've never lived the life of a consultant, so I didn't know what it was like to be a consultant. But I do know what it's like to be in-house and a lot of us in our team knew how it is to be in-house. You know exactly the excuses or the bureaucracy that you need to navigate. The length of decision making. I would like to think that makes it a little bit more accepting on their side to work with people like us.

DEVELOPING FOCUS

RICH: People like us. Are we all crazy?

PAT : Yeah, kind of. I don't know why we do what we do.

RICH: Part of the challenge, and I've found this out with my own agency, you could be like be asked to do everything. What has your focus been and how have you developed that over time?

PAT : So, the tactic in year one was suck it up for what the market is ready for. It may not be what you want to do. It could be reporting. It could be anything that is basic, but that's what the market is about. But, over time, kind of build out, there's a center line of the product. There is an MVP, youre most valuable product that you want to go for and if there are no buyers, make the buyers. Because they don't know what they are looking for and this is the beauty of sustainability. I think because it could go into meaningful products or services. It could go strategy, government.

Yes, we have said no to certain clients who have asked for..Oh, can you do this? Can you do this? They tend to kind of, if they like you, they want a one-stop shop. We're very, I guess we've set ourselves up to be a very humble brand and we know what we could be good at. But the way we set up the purpose business is a network of experts as well. So if we don't have it in-house, there actually a second layer. I know everyone says partnerships and all that, but they are within the team. So there is expertise that we know we can pass on and you front that best kind of team to the client.

We are now working on frame works that are branded, or IP hopefully under our name and all that and that could not have happened if we tried to do that in the beginning. So you can prototype and you can test, which is what we did the first two years. Very exciting times in the next year. I would think something that is on brand it's gonna come out.

BUILDING A BUSINESS

RICH: As an entrepreneur you can have big aspirations. You want to build a team in six offices in six countries, da da da. Some are like no no. I want a lifestyle business. I want to be able to work out. I want to be able to have the family, like how are you and the business and how does it effect how you make decisions on how to build, hire, cash flow? All these things can add pressure. How do you building your business? What is your mindset? What are you really focused on doing?

PAT : There is a vision that we all share. So, working towards the vision, but I think one thing that has made us really different is the setup with the people. So every single one of us has a life and sustainability. Once a marine biologist. One is an ethics professor. One does mushroom farming on rooftops. Another on is a carbon manager. So we don't want to take that away from them because that's what makes them relevant. The last thing you want to be is, I used to do that and therefore hire me and because I know what I'm doing. I know what I'm advising you of. That is what everyone does. We are active in that space, hands dirty. But we can tell you if you are going in that direction, we are actually in there. You know like we are pushing regulation or we are figuring out what the price of the next resource is and we'll figure it out with you.

In that sense, there's a bit more balance. The way we hire people, if you wanted a secure full-time job, 9 hours, 10 hours in an office, you're not going to work with us. In fact, we've had prospects who've said to us, you are too disruptive. We're not ready for that yet. I take that as a good thing. Because then you filter out who it is you can work with and not. That said, we're not being flippant about setups and minimum compliance and things and such. Everyone got a life in sustainability and everyone pursues that while being on the team. I think that's the reason why we attract the people we are working with right now.

SELLING SUSTAINABILITY

RICH: Now, when you have so many players in the market, I'll talk about sustainability, how do you differentiate yourself? How do you create definitions that are engaging to clients, just at a product level? How have you found that problem?

PAT : Well, I think that's two questions there. Once, is how do you differentiate yourself from all the others. I think our model is very, very different. The way we work is very different. Having that setup allows us to be cost efficient with the highest level of expertise. So we'd like to think we're not up here with a you know whose are most expensive number of zeros and down here with interns kind of thing. So that's one.

Two, the specialization and sustainability is away from just the technical environment assessment or just what are my community programs going to be. Let's bring it back to purpose so that is what is very, very distinct with us because we know...oh, profit is not my purpose. There is still that kind of enlightenment with some businesses. But when you link it to what is the legacy air China create. What was your business there in the first place? It then becomes unnecessary to do a materiality assessment sometimes. Because if you stick to that, then you know exactly what you should be focusing on.

When we work with SMEs, it's really encouraging because everyone says what, they have no money startups. They have no money for sustainability, but actually it's a café or chain of restaurants..bang, it's food safety, it's packaging, it's sourcing. They know their issue. That is such a joy to work with because the worse thing is when a prospect just wants to do everything and doesn't know which one and wants you to figure it out and you kind of...your job is to show could you do this, could you do that, and yea.

REDEFINING WORK

RICH: How do you feel now that you are on your own? You get to pick and choose. You don't have to appease the masses. You don't have to appease your boss. Does that bring you personally, a very different feeling about how you go to work everyday?

PAT : First of all, we do not get to pick and choose all the time. I mean, you're still beholding to clients, right. There are still clients you love, love, love, to work with. Clients that are not ready for you yet. But yes, you get to pick and choose your battles the kind of work sometimes. Every day is a different day. There is no...I think in the first week or maybe even the first month, there was...I began to realize there was no weekday and a weekend. Sunday is proposal day, but what you all I am running on Tuesday. You're all miserable in your 9'oclock work hour. You're still there, right?

That is fun. We look forward to that. I think again, with our setup, there's a lot of us who do virtual offices. I have three or four mother who have got two or three kids a piece and they run a program on GHG emission training with a baby in had. That's just you, know it's good. It's cool. It's very cool to s see a client that you didn't think would be okay with that, to be hundred percent all over it.

WORDS OF WISDOM

RICH: What advice would you give to them? Being inside the machine, having a comfortable life, maybe the kids and the package and the blah, blah blah. What advice would you give to them if they are considering making that jump?

PAT : Again, I'm not an entrepreneur so it's not as if one day I'm gonna go sell this room and I didn't even think of it like that. But in hindsight, intrepreneurial thinking, why, why this all that when you've got all the perks right? If you can do, be the change agent internally absolutely do it. I think my advice is to speak up and find the kindred spirits that can make that happen for you. If that doesn't work and you've tried relentlessly and you've found you know the c-suite that will give you the blessing to go and do it and there is still none. Then you gotta think about the practical stuff. Paying the bills, balancing the family and all that. I don't think I really thought let me go and set up my own thing in fact, I probably even said is there someone who I could just join and help that girl because that's the easy route.

ROMANTICIZING ENTREPRENEURSHIP

RICH: Now, a lot of people they romanticize the idea of being entrepreneurs, owning their own time, okay. What are some of the things that you may have romanticized about to start off with that have become reality?

PAT : I guess you've got an image of your day in your head, squeezing a bit of running I here, I can go catch up with a friends and you can do the work in between and that's enough. When you're setting up your own, whether you're alone or with partners, you've gotta accept that there is no you outside of that. That this is consuming even when you're on the treadmill, or swimming in my case, that's the time you kind of you know recover but that's also your creative side so there is no switching off I guess. You can't have, you shouldn't afford that luxury, but then again if you don't work it's not going to get built. So you can have the four hour day and ya know sixteen hours on the side that you're doing whatever and it will only grow that space.

So I guess if you romanticize, oh in two years you're going to do a series and in five years I'm gonna be bought out aint gonna happen if you're not going talk in the hour. But like I said, I had no expectations. I think for me it was more the reverse which was, oh my God where is it going now? Like what are my options and everyone saying go this way, go this way, go this way. There's no one way in fact we should take that offline and have the okay what do I do now? Its year three.

GETTING GOOD ADVICE

RICH: Ok, then that's a different question then. Who do you trust to give you advice that's useful? Everyone will give you advice, everyone will say what you should do, but how do you, how do you find the people to trust? Are there people you absolutely trust? Like people who've gone through it? Are there people who are entrepreneurs? Like who do you go to?

PAT : I deliberately created a circle of entrepreneurs, ex-entrepreneurs, semi VCs and people who are just really good at shit I'm not good at. So whether it's super hardcore finance, or if it's you know, it's certain aspects. I have them in like a panel in my head and I can go phone them up. They're not on the board, they're not, they're not necessarily with a discipline on how they speak to me, but they are my biggest critics. These are the people you know we'll just call it what it is and tell you to stop. Or if you're, you know flip flopping on a decision they're just gonna call my bluff out and force me to do it.

I actually have one who is on the finance base kind of advising me, and I've known him since before Uni. He is serial, he is lethal, he says and I quote, "my job is to take you to hell, but make you want to go for it before I even ask you." It's just that. Or take you to heaven and make you wanna go before I even ask you. They're very, very spot on like that. I'm lucky to have circles like the World Economic Forum, YGL who have all done this who are all amazing. I kind of feel like I'm this teeny, tiny brownie making businesswoman and you're all these tech and everyone is going through the same thing.

COMPLAINING & FEAR

RICH: What room in your life do you have for complaining about your situation? How much thought do you give to failure and maybe the lessons from...like if this doesn't work out I have this. Or if this project doesn't, do you like to learn from failure? Do you fear failure? Are you someone whose little hesitant? How does that fit in your life?

PAT : I think its breathed in and out every day because again, this isn't my comfort zone. The fact that that if all goes apes and this isn't working then I gotta go plan B, plan C. I think it helps to have that attitude. I didn't do that deliberately. This is kind of the way that these things have fallen for me, but do I embrace failure? yes. Do I seek it? I try to avoid it of course, but you know, let's say that every scenario you know how its going to fail. That's here's kind of sense check of whether you're ready for it to succeed or not. Has it failed in certain respects, yes. Sometimes its just a genuine failure. Let the wind blow as it says. Let the wind blow and then you know life moves on. It's not as if you could belabor that and say I'm never gonna try that service again or that system again. I'm not gonna do it this way because it really depends on the way your clients and you're people want to work with you. so.

RICH: I like it though. Embrace failure, but don't seek it.

PAT : Don't seek it. Fail fast.

RICH: Fail fast, but learn faster.

For more interviews from the "Entrepreneurs for Good" series, check out the playlist here.

Stay tuned for more clips and full interviews in the coming weeks.

by Rich

Dream Big, but Act Small - Francis Ngai, SvHK

In this episode of Entrepreneurs For Good, I speak with Francis Ngai about the work he is doing to build community centers in some of Hong Kong's most vulnerable areas.

Work that is difficult, but as he says more than once, while you need to have big dreams, you need to be focused on taking small steps.

It is a fantastic conversation about approaching big challenges, the role of purpose, and maintaining continued momentum through small steps.

It's important that you keep on dreaming. Dream Big, but Act Small.

About the Entrepreneurs For Good Series

About Francis Ngai

Francis Ngai is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of SVhk. He is the Co-Founder of Green Monday, Playtao Education and RunOurCity.

Francis believes that everyone can be a changemaker. Seeing ‘ME’ as the reflection of ‘WE’, he hopes to bring together more people to re-imagine our city and pursue big dreams to make a difference to the community we live in.

Prior to establishing SVhk, Francis was the Head of Strategy in a listed technology conglomerate in Hong Kong. He graduated from the City University of Hong Kong and was conferred as an Honorary Fellow by the University in 2013. He was selected as one of the 100 Asia Pioneers by The Purpose Economy in 2014, a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum in 2012 and one of Hong Kong’s Ten Outstanding Young Persons in 2011.

As an ultra-running veteran, Francis completed The North Pole Marathon in 2013 and the 250-km Gobi March of the 4 Deserts race series in 2012.

Follow Francis and SVhk:
Website: http://sv-hk.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/francis.ngai.90
LinkedIn: https://hk.linkedin.com/in/francis-ngai-87915831
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Ngai
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/socialventureshk

About Rich

Contact Rich
[email protected]

Full Interview Transcript

Welcome back everyone. Thank you for you very much for joining. I am here with Francis Ngai who has worked in across the spectrum of issues in Hong Kong, Very inspirational. We're talking about how your children drive you to change. To the future of millennial purpose. Then how to bring business skills to the social sector for impact. So we hope you'll enjoy this. If you do, please remember to like, comment and share.

BACKGROUND

RICH: Francis, thank you very much for taking the time to meet with us. Please do here and maybe introduce yourself and the work that you are doing here at SVHK.

FRANCIS: I am Francis from Social Ventures Hong Kong. I founded the organization since 2007. So we are practicing that philanthropy. We invest, incubate and invent social innovation in Hong Kong.

VENTURE PHILANTROPY

RICH: What is venture philanthropy? What does the impact investment?

FRANCIS: I think those are some terminologies that can explain more briefly. I think overall to access things like an applications of all good resources in the community So come capital owners they don't they prefer not just writing check. They want to participate more. I use them, their networking expertise, professional volunteers. So people with good ideas...social entrepreneurs or corporate. We try to reshuffle all these resources coming together. So we threw ourselves to always to be an applicative.

GETTING STARTED

RICH: So how did you start SVHK? Like what was your background? Why get into the venture philanthropy area when you probably had another business you were working on?

FRANCIS: I start with business, around 15 years of business or experience. Having two kids and I quit my job. So probably a lot of self interest I think to my kids future wealth. So I think that and current world is not that good. Also I think we are not using enough idea to work it out. I think we have a lot of resources in the community impacting. We will always just prefer to wait for the government to happen. I think obviously original idea that we try to do something else.

CATALYST FOR CHANGE

RICH: I know when you have children, everything changes. So, what were the major concerns you had about the world that you were like you're looking at your kids, oh my god I don't' know what I'm going to do?

FRANCIS: After having kids, you reflect. So what is the current role? What is the society? You read about some education brings about how to see some, but I think at the end of the day I think that it's how you are doing is influencing their future. So I'm asking myself, what is the most important thing to teach them. I think at the same time I am asking myself whether I'm dreaming or not. Maybe not. I'm helping some rich people to fulfill their dream, which I don't think hopefully can agree with that dream. It's just profit sometimes over purpose. So how can we turn it around? Around society we see that we're not talking about purpose.

RICH: I struggle with this. I really view business as a medium to, I wont say find purpose, but to deliver purpose. At the end of the day, what you have here is a community center. People will say, oh it's a non-profit, but it's still a business. You still have rent, you still have staff, you still have P&L, you have everything. The question is what do you do at the end of the year. When you started this, when you started getting into this, obviously you probably had a very different view of what venture philantropy or whatever. Like social entrepreneurship, whatever that it might have been. How did you start like, kind of starry-eyed, and then what do you feel now after you six to ten years of being in this space?

FRANCIS: I would say at first is static bubble that we shuffle around a lot of all that seeing philanthropy. How social investing is doing things. Just trying to form that kind of entity to do things. I think in the long journey we discovery more. I think could be summarized as the purpose. I think at first I think we all remember that. When we're doing business in doing something in the world, even non profit, they got a purpose. But ultimately we become more resources driven. We just see something that into more rich as KIPs and then we lost something else.

RICH: Now when you go back...actually I'm going to take you back a little...you talk about when you started in business. Like I started in business and was like, I'm going to change the world. I'm going to do this and this and I'm going to grow and I'm gonna grown and that's like my goal. Then you get a little bit more, practical. You start going wow, I have bills to pay, I have staff to feed. You become very practical. You don't loose your dream. You don't loose your purpose, but you definitely get into the business and it becomes a very different thing.

I found the same thing for social innovation as well. I'm' going to save the world. I'm going to help these children. I'm going to educate the elderly, whatever it may be. But then you get into the business side of things. How has your own perspective changed from really kind of idealistic into the practical? What are the practicalities now that you didn't think you had before?

FRANCIS: So I think at first I think we started off with do engine thinking. So I think social enterprise is all about social business. So we didn't think that what was one thing was more important than the other. So when we find the purpose, the social side how was the problem that we were are more cared about. I think that's it. So after that, I think we had a whole attitude on the business side. We have to make it sustainable. Make it work. Make it a public so everyone gets to know it.

So I think how do you keep the balance is not easy, but I think always and still in 10 years of journey, one thing is important, keep on dreaming. Dream big, but act small. So we hold up to with persistence on every thing we are working on. But every day we still try to think about fine tuning our model. Because we find that if we lost that dream that could keep us forever, we lost the momentum. So I think that also feeling feed back along is the passion. Where's the passion coming from? So every day I think still we are asking ourselves in the morning, why we are coming into office again today. I think that is the most important question. If we have that, we will keep on dreaming. We don't mind the niddy gritty things. We don't mind the hard work. I think if we lost it, we're done.

STAYING FOCUSED

RICH: You have a lot of different issues. You have Diamond Cab, that is kind of challenge access - wheelchair access. You have Green Monday, Meet. Is it a problem that you're all over the place? Or do you think that it would be better if you were focused on one issue? Is it part it....because you have to maintain your passion you have to move things around? Or is it that the best way you think you can get things done?

FRANCIS: Definitely a challenge on my team especially. Ten meetings in a day. In the morning you're talking about kids. But the other meetings talking about elderly. Then we move onto the climate change. So we keep on shifting. I think that is exactly our role. We don't need to be under the spotlight. Someone has to do it.

FUNDING MODEL

RICH: So you're basically investing into other entrepreneurs and their ideas and then you also start your own. Where does your funding come from?

FRANCIS: I think first the two or three of years it was my own resources, time, days, nights, kids, etc. But I think later we got some philanthropy money coming in. So I think all along I think partially we are relying on these resources to build that up because they are committed in incubating more social innovations in Hong Kong. So we are using that resources. But I think in long journey we also be our own income through some program, some incubation program. For the deals we don't ride on primarily on the profit. So I think it's not the short time we can get any repayment. I think whatever we get back, we just put back in the fund.

RICH: So are you making equity investments then? Or do you prefer debt or is it grants? Like what's your median?

FRANCIS: Mostly equity.

RICH: Ok.

FRANCIS: Grant money would say that a lot of foundations would like to do more new things now. So when we, whatever we get these we go approach them. So we invest very little in the very early stage. So if you're sustain on the prototype stage. But after that, we try to find true investment even in equity as well. But we have to be bigger equity stakeholders some times because we need to have a safe interactions, great for sure. Invest in more.

MAINTAINING FOCUS

RICH: Actually you mentioned something I kind of struggle with. They're always looking for something new. For me, the problems never really change. So how hard is it for you to focus albeit the entrepreneurs, the donors funders on just getting the current work done? Like how do you manage that?

FRANCIS: It's difficult. I think more philosophically sometimes we follow the flow. So we're seeing that one entrepreneur seeing that problem Something that we always keep in mind is that apart from the direct impact, which is confined to the scope within the entity, we always see the impact of that. The rippling effect. How that have the implications from policymakers. How with that them with an implications to the other industry people. Like Diamond Cab, there are two cabs. We get ourselves sustainable, and then another taxi licenses only. But end of conflict, 80 cabs. So like being affordable housing model, right now a couple different NGO's replicating it. Even in the media they call it...

RICH: That's okay right?

FRANCIS: That's what, that's how. So what we see right now at the juncture of ten years, we are shaping our 10 year plan. We are seeing a long journey, if we talk bout housing we talk about poverty. What kind of partners we need in that cab. Not all the things we need to invest ourselves. But we coordinated as one cabs. We need Avengers instead of Iron Man.

RICH: But what fuels your continued dreaming? You start off you're really passionate, you meet the challenge, but you are still executing it on a daily basis. What has been your impact so far that you look back and go I feel really proud about this? Then, do you still look in your kids eyes and go I still have a lot of work to do?

FRANCIS: I still do a lot. I think that learning from the journey whether change system or change mindsets. So like the interview today. I think using the small works that we have, how can we spread it out? Changing more minds is so important. I think maybe the ultimate goal is changing more mindsets. So I don't see that we need more people quit their job to be social entrepreneur is hard. So why we're working on business 2.0 or something else.

I think there are a lot of entrepreneurs can work together. So we're definitely in the world I think the society we're migrating from 1.0 to 2.0. If 1.0 is more resources drive in, 2.0 is more about a shared mindset, more value driven.

RICH: But do you see that happening? Are people more shared mindset now? Or are they getting more...cuz we have so much challenges of where we're all pulling back from each other. Is it...

FRANCIS: Main streamers do not. But I think all the movement start with quite a few city people like us. So I think we if we don't work it now, 10 years later when my kids are really grown up they will not see it. But I would say that at least the biggest gain that I have in the last 10 years...also feeling all my passion as the people that we see. I suspect that the mayor all the people got some good DNA in them. It's just that we don't have innovated enough to think about some platform for them to come up.

RICH: Well, and what the way to catalyze that? Like, how do you tap into that hidden gene or into that thing that's just sleeping for right now? How do you drive it? Like what does it take?

FRANCIS: Baby step. Green Monday. We are now asking people to be full time with charity. Although it made more sense for one individual for their health and things. I myself am a vegetarian, but I think we just take one day. Just start with one meal. By the way it's a beyond burger. It's delicious. Its fulfilling. So after that, we talk about you create an image. Use marketing.

If a marketing company can get someone to buy a bag, which is manufactured in Shenzhen, but paying several tens of thousands of dollars. How can I...can we use the same thing to your fake people to get them on board to try on hew things first? But after 10, you tell them oh by the way you're saving the planet now. All of them will become entrepreneur. They will internalize what the good habits. So I think these kinds of things is what we're learning now.

But I think all the more we start with small. Start with something small. After the engagement, they become part of the adventure too. That's more important.

RICH: Okay. Kind of going back to your marketing. What are the tools that you found most reliable. Like from your old days in marketing, what do you go back to every day in the office...yeah, this is what I used to do for this client? We can use that here. Like are there some standards tools that you've continued using.

FRANCIS: I think not very formal. I think at the end of the day I think it's more result of thing But I think one thing that we use a lot when I am at the time of them, in the business world, I also discovered one new trend that I invented some model is on the collateral collaborative marketing tracking. Collaborative strategies so that we always apply. Basically these partnerships. Especially social entrepreneur, I highly encourage you to try build more leverage.

In the past hierarchical world, you find resources, feeling somewhat intermediary finance and partners and paying them and it worked a lot. I think not now. We're all in a circular positions. Then we come out in the middle where the value people came around. There's no high and low. We don't back for resources. They just come. They're fulfilling their own self resources and self interest. So I think we all fulfill thinking about the mutual benefits. We got corporate, they're funding it through charity anyway. But I think it's good for your brand.

We work on something that they don't demand for even. But for some company, people can come in here, they're just get a service. I don't know we take them through to empower them later. I think it's kind of more...think about neutral. So everyone we collaborate, we think about what is their benefit first.

RICH: What are the resources do you think that we're missing right now in the social space? Like if there's things that you could attract business people of any stripe or something else. It could be government, any other like what do you think that we're missing? What do you think that could take our challenges and solutions to scale?

FRANCIS: If there is one thing you want me to mention, I would say we have need to encourage more links. We need to build more links. So I think we are not having innovative platform enough to aggregate resources. So ticks around.

So I think for example, Green Monday. I take that example that we can both understand more clearly. So I think when we work with some caterers and we think about ways for them to participate. So when we work with some food manufacturers, we think about some of the waste. So if you create more different vehicles, so that could help them to come in, come on board much easier.

So for fund raisers, even. I would say talk to some vendors. If your funding directly on the impact or _______ (16:07) social enterprises, we can choose to fund the links. How can you encourage them to work more with the corporate.

So for some early pilot in some innovative, I always called them infrastructure innovation. So when you need to invest into innovation infrastructures because right now we're at the juncture of migrating to a new world, if there's an new world. But if I think if we do not have enough links, we cannot carry over all resources for people to come on board. That's so much important.

TALKING TO DONORS

RICH: I was wondering....people really don't want to invest in the infrastructure though. They want to invest in the shiny building, not in the pipes, the wiring. Ya know, they don't' want to invest in research. They want to invest in the program that has no research. Like they want to fund the idea, not the amount. So how do you, I mean, because you come from the business world, because you have your own resources, is that where you spend...you build the foundations and you don't have to worry about what the donors want?

FRANCIS: We definitely get better language to talk to them. We know people, but I think most important thing is it makes sense for them. So I think it's around, I will say that. The most important thing is the kids. How can you illustrate that with them. Like especially we imagine a lot and infrastructures.

We need to go back to the funding and educate them and share with them. Tell them if that works perfectly. So I think without case, it's all empty talks. By the way I would say that younger generations for some big families they're changing the mindset. They don't believe in the name on the building anymore. They are migrating into a new generations. Within 10 years, I would say a lot of the younger generations would take over.

RICH: I think that's actually how we met. Through the family business network. Probably I think way back when way back when because I spoke with you at Bernie's event. So actually that kind of brings a really interesting point. Like the next generation of Hong Kong. Hong Kong is a city run by families, largely. At least in the business world. As you mentioned a lot of the names on buildings. Albeit the business school or the different buildings that they own.

THE NEXT GEN

RICH: Five, ten years ago the second gen was either trying to leave the family business, but now they are trying to come back. I know a few people are coming back. Like what are they doing? Why would they want to change now? What do you seeing that makes them want to change the family business?

FRANCIS: I would say no matter what is their background, they are all citizens of Hong Kong. They are all people involved. So I would say the millennials especially, when they grown up, they have a lot of education on a sustainable world. On how to be build a better society, it's in their blood.

So I also think they are documented entrepreneur. They're not that resources driving. They're not that profit driven. They see more differently. In terms of wealth, I think they would think that I'm ok for the next, next six generations. So ....That number is just a number in the game. So I think for them, the more fulfilling thing is while they are doing their own business or doing their own land. They want to see the real impact.

So I think its shifting, but again I would say that we need more infrastructure. More different ways. Sometimes more cool way when we talked about charity of philanthropy, sometimes its way too old fashioned. So we need to move on as well.

RICH: Thank you very much for your time. You have a line of kids lined up outside. I don't want to hold them out! They're like I want to color. Thank you very much for your time. Very inspiring.

For more interviews from the "Entrepreneurs for Good" series, check out the playlist here.

Stay tuned for more clips and full interviews in the coming weeks.

by Rich

Shifting Consumers Off Plastic - Ada Yip, Urban Spring | Entrepreneur For Good

As the world may be finally waking up to the challenge that plastic is presenting out environment, and for many, the plastic beverage bottle is one of the products that is front and center.

In Hong Kong though, the people at Urban Spring think they have a solution that will help reduce the number of plastic bottles that the city is sending to landfill. Something that over the last two months has grown more urgent as China has closed its borders to waste imports.

To learn more about their mission, and how they are attacking the challenge of getting consumers to act more responsibly, I spoke with their CEO Ada Yip to learn more.

This interview is about solving one of the biggest problems we face through sustainable consumer change.

About the Entrepreneurs For Good Series

About Ada

Ada is the Executive Director at Urban Spring, a purpose-driven start-up with a mission to reduce the consumption of single-use plastic in Hong Kong through the provision of safe and modern water drinking experience.

Ada is also a co-founder of 43 Ventures which invests financial and human capital in innovative social start-ups.

Follow Ada and Urban Spring
Website: http://www.urbanspring.hk/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ada.yip.18
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ada-yip-hongkong

About Rich

Contact Rich
[email protected]

Full Interview Transcript

RICH: Welcome back everyone. Thank you for joining. We are here with Ada Yip who is with Urban Spring and we are standing in front of their Well product, which is just going out to the market. We're here to talk to day about social entrepreneurship, building a project that changes mindsets and really just maintaining a positive attitude as your building your enterprise going forward. So we hope you enjoy this episode, if you do please like, share and comment.

BACKGROUND

RICH: So do me a favor and give us an introduction about yourself and about Well.

ADA YIP: So I'm born and brought up in Hong Kong. So home grown sort of Asian girl and you know I've been in actually in a corporate world for more than 15 years. The four years ago I decided that I want to explore social entrepreneurship and got to network with a lot of people you know, meet the fonder of Urban Strain, which Well is our first product. That's how I got into you know starting to work with the company two years ago and develop the product. Well is basically a new design water station, which we hope that people would refill. You know, really develop, redevelop that trust with drinking water outside home and offices. So the mission really is to reduce consumption of single use plastic bottles. We want to provide that alternative.

RICH: So you're trying to basically get rid of the plastic bottle at the end of the day.

ADA YIP: I hope so.

THE PLASTIC PROBLEM

RICH: Why is that a problem? I think we've all seen on the news, in the oceans, but is there a particular problem with plastic and single use plastic in Hong Kong itself?

ADA YIP: Every single day we've got 5 million tons of plastic waste just a day in Hong Kong. Majority of those are actually plastic bottles. The majority of the plastic bottle is actually water bottles so that's why were' coming from so it's really a huge problem and we're just talking about Hong Kong. As far as I know, all the major cities in the world each year is a double digit increase in bottle sales.

RICH: Now I kind of think like when it comes to these issues, we've had NGOs for years tell us that we should reduce, reuse, recycle that we should bring our own bottles, things like that. It hasn't worked. I mean, honestly, we're still using more and more plastic every day. How is your approach different? I mean you're using your building product, you're bringing a business solution, how is this different than just pure advocating? How do you think this might change the market?

ADA YIP: I think you know Richard, you hit the point. I mean, we are providing a product i.e. an alternative. So I think that nonprofit world actually has done a fantastic job basically educating and bringing that awareness in the past you know decade actually. But bringing you the bulk bottle, it helps, but then if I'm really thirsty in the middle of Causeway Bay or Central, I cannot find water I cannot refill. I'm really thirsty. I have to go into convenience store and supermarket and buy.

Today I am offering an alternative, i.e. if you bring your own bottle, or if you buy your first disposable of the day, you can actually go and refill as opposed to buy another one. You know, if no more like in a really hot day, people buy 2 or 3 but ends up only buy one for laze people that don't bring their own bottles, we're already saving a lot. So I think having that alternative giving people that choice is important. So I think we worked, I see it as a collaboration with the charities basically did they very good with advocating working with the government on communication and education and we focus on the product and work with them on that communication and awareness and all that.

More importantly I think what we try to do its really bring the product. i.e not everyone is environmentally friendly, but every one wants to look cool. Everyone has got an attitude how they want to live a sustainable life and we hope to provide that option.

MARKETING THE IDEA

RICH: How do you change the mindsets? I mean you know we talked about, I was actually kind of thinking I've started carrying my own hot and cold bottles now. I'll go to Starbucks with one if I want a hot or cold coffee. How do you get people to think that this is cool? Because eventually, even not just cool, like I'm not going to embarrassed by carrying this bottle around with me to a meeting. How....is that because you like try different bottles, you try different cups? But at some point you still have to carry the thing around, so how do you help people just realize that it's ok to carry this around?

ADA YIP: I mean as you say the toughest is actually not the product all those were quite painful to do product development. The toughest thing for our business is changing peoples behavior you know to a point about actually carrying a bottle. So I think a couple of things I think one is from a sort of branding perspective and how we position ourselves. I'm not fighting against convenience. You know because whether its Hong Kong or some other country, buying and dumping more recycling it's so easy.

So I think it's about how carrying that bottle or cup, it's basically a reflection of who you are. A lot of consumer brands are actually doing that. So, if people feel that you know a gentleman with a suit on for you that they are kind of cool carrying you know that chain store cup, you know around and you know almost a display of their way of life having that morning coffee. Why would they not feel that if I portrayed also saved with a certain image.

It's very tricky. But, I think the younger generation definitely have already bought into the idea. So, I think it's how good the infrastructure.

EARLY ADOPTERS

RICH: Who's the easiest to turn over right now for you? Do you just focus on them only and then work on the harder people later or do you invest into the people because the return is so much greater later? Like upfront it's more difficult. How do you make that decision?

ADA YIP: You know its tricky. I would say the early adopters would be the younger people and the people who are doing sports. People already carrying the bottle. Almost I'm basically providing the convenience for them. Then for corporate, that's also who I want to target, but probably the corporate who want to get consumers or want to be in line with the younger people sporting people. So that would be my early adopters and then I move on to the semi convert and then the hardest one ya know they were further down the line. I think just like any products, I can't aim on day one to the selling and basically influence in every single person. So I think it's really up to us with the resources that we have, how do you strategize and work with different parties to make a bigger impact and they're showing maybe a long time.

FUNDING SOURCES

RICH: Who's going to pay for this at the end of the day? Because you walk up...do you walk up, pay for this with your phone? Like how does this work?

ADA YIP: So today, its paid by the venue that holds. So for example the shopping center they see it as part of customer service. For schools it's part of the facilities. Later on we would develop which to reach the payment feature because as we roll out to more space I can imagine there would be a common shop that cannot basically provide this for free to use it. But I do you know if this is a good replacement of them selling bottled water, they were great they don't have to keep inventory, you know soo ..

RICH: So they can sell this.

ADA YIP: Yeah so they can sell basically per refill. So you know so they're different payment models. This early stage we're lucky to be working with people who would be basically hosting as a subscription. We trying not to sell the product the reason so that like a photocopy machine. That we are, we can maintain the brand basically do our own servicing, make sure everything is good system and standard servicing.

DEFINING SUCCESS

RICH: So appear to look out say 5 years from now, what do you want your kep metrics of success? So if you look back and you say we succeeded, what would success be for you? The number of bottles? What's....

ADA YIP: I think the answer is I see situations where people are competing, how good looking the water bottles are. Or people you know in a group of friends, someone being you know making a comment say what are you doing with a disposable? That will be a scenario that I would like to see if that's the sort of part of a movement that we are part of. I will be really excited.

Obviously is from business perspective and the traditional matrix will be around how many of this get installed. To me, I think the behavior and how people see disposable, how people are embracing news, it is probably more satisfying. But from you know obviously form the financial standpoint, it would be basically how many of these get in stores and also not just number of installation, but that how many get saved. How many water get dispensed as opposed to you know what if you consume through the plastic bottle.

EXPECTATIONS vs. REALITY

RICH: So actually I want to change here a little bit. You come from the business background, you came into the social entrepreneur background, or social inner space, what did you think about social entrepreneurship before you got into it? What do you think about it now?

ADA YIP: It was more out of interest. How does that work? I think that I'm still very positive about that. I mean I hope one day no one talks about social entrepreneurship because there is just entrepreneurs and that's it right? So and I think the interesting thing is although we have gone up sort of that, this field called social entrepreneurship, but actually people who are in it a lot of them are not really believing in it. i.e. they still not just struggling with the business and the social impact, but really you know they don't believe in it and the sense that they are still running it like a nonprofit.

So I think there's still a long way to go although I'm on the positive side. How we set up not the majority i.e. we are set up as a limited company by shares. We are very, we believe in actually not distributing, not limiting the distribution of profit like some ____________(11:51). Because we truly believe we can, you know we can have a sustainable business and attracting the right investors in. You know we don't' have to set up a particular way so that people feel that wall is doing good some money is set aside to do it like that. It's just this is the way we believe this is the reason we set up the company is because of that social mention and that's it. Obviously governance, operation it needs haltering. It all needs to support that, but it doesn't need to be restricted by certain financials.

IT's JUST BUSINESS

RICH: Especially when you would have been starting this, there was still a premium to be called a social entrepreneur. That was actually an attractive feature, but what you're saying is you're actually flipping it. You see more the value and saying no, we're just a business. Like, we have a social mission. We're trying to solve it, but were' not going to play the social entrepreneurship card.

ADA YIP: Yes and no. So I'm not playing that card so for people who are not understanding social entrepreneurship, I don't call myself social enterprise. It would just confuse them more and then I got them to think so are you a charity? So, I'm just a startup with a very clean mission. That's it. They just focus on what I am selling and operating.

But the no part it, I think we still need to have this subject or this category called social entrepreneurship because I don't think we're in a world that people believe business and social can come together or actually have a greater value if they do both. So we almost need to have this category so that people focus in thinking about I, discussing about it, until everyone is on the same page. Then we probably can get there and just talk about entrepreneurship. But we're not there yet. So you know that's why farm like this its a good channel to really just have a healthy debate . You know of different schoolof thoughts and how people approach it.

RICH: Great, I think that's all. Thank you very much for your time. It's been a pleasure.

For more interviews from the "Entrepreneurs for Good" series, check out the playlist here.

Stay tuned for more clips and full interviews in the coming weeks.

by Rich

Food Entrepreneurship, and Bootstrapping, in Shanghai - Simon Vogel | Entrepreneurs For Good

In this episode of Entrepreneurs For Good, I speak with Simon Vogel about his attempt to build health food delivery platform, from the 17th floor of an apartment building.

It is an amazing look at how creative entrepreneurs can get when bootstrapping!

Simon's Story is one about bootstrapping in China, failing fast, and (hopefully) learning faster

About the Entrepreneurs For Good Series

About Simon Vogel

When coming to Asia a couple of years ago, he wanted to open a restaurant but quickly realized that it would not be as easy as he thought. Instead of that, he launched a business in delivery food.

Follow Simon and Saucepan:
Website: http://saucepan.co
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-vogel-87055715/simon

About Rich

Follow Rich
Website: http://www.richbrubaker.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rich.brubaker
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richbrubaker
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Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/richbrubaker

Contact Rich
[email protected]

Full Transcript

SIMON VOGEL, SAUCEPAN

My name is Simon. I'm from Switzerland. Working here what we set up a company called Saucepan, which is a food delivery company. Been here in Shanghai from, lets say almost two year now.

WHY SHANGHAI?

Well, I, well basically me and my partner both came, we cant to Shanghai because we had like some family members here and definitely the markets is very interesting market to be part of nowadays. Previously, me, I was studying in a hospitality school in Switzerland and also I was working for sometimes for hotels, different 5-Star hotel brands.

WHY BECOME AN ENTREPRENEUER?

Well, to be honest, like I said like we were always like involved in a food in the food industry, in the food and beverage industry. Me coming closer to the thirty year, but the age 30 I was thinking like I need to do something which has more meaning. Well, looking at the market like Shanghai or China or if you take the big picture Asia, I think there is a lot of things you can do here in terms of foods. Especially delivering clean and trusted food to people's home.

THE FIRST STEPS

To be honest, it was more that we didn't had like a clear plan. I'd say like this because we came here with the idea of more opening a restaurant. So, we came here in 2014 and then we just realized it was like at the time where all the rents was getting higher and higher and it was just commenting suicide if we would have open a restaurant at least back then in the days. So, then more and more we were looking about what was existing in the markets and what we saw. How the consumer behavior. How they are like ordering delivery food delivery form time to time. We were saying okay, this could be like an interesting concept like to actually bring the food to people's home.

Initially, we started with a three specific business model, which we completely failed. Then, we had to privates back in December last year and now we are like right on track on a food delivery ready-to-eat business.

THE FIRST CONSUMER

Well, we specifically targeted expat at the beginning because we were feeling much more comfortable with the expat markets. We were coming form what we both know this how I conduct the consumer behavior of an expat. However, more and more we were like working on our concept. More and more we were realizing that the locals were also interested in a healthy food delivery concept. So that's how we realized that our concept would be both, as a market fit for both expats and locals.

So we started targeting the expat markets because we both, the two founders of this company are true expats and for us it was much more easier to tie it to stats with a consumers that we knew in the past. It was much more easier for us to target this clientele. However, more and more we were operating, we realized that Chinese, local customers were also interested in this concept. Now we feel that we have the right market fit for both locals and expats.

PILOTING AND PIVOTING

Well, I said we had like low capital to start with. We could not, this is also why we switch the concept initially not to go into a restaurant idea because rent wise was too expensive. So we were really looking about how we could save maximum amount of money. Initially we started from an apartment. Then we said okay, where can we find a place where we could operate. Then we checked a bit around the market and we saw ok, we could like here we're in China. We could maybe rent out an apartment and really like renovate it and then operate from there. This is how we decided really like to inject money like step by step and first to see if the concept is working before like investing a higher amount of money.

For instance, with our initial plan it was more, how do you say? We could say the first five months we tested the product, we tested the market and it the way we say the initial, our initial idea, there was no real demand bind it. This is where it pushed us to pirate the business model in December and this is where we now are fully operational.

EXTENDING THE RUNWAY

I believe first, was the rent issue because running a food and beverage business you need a good location. We could not afford this at the beginning so this is why we initially started off in an apartment.

Second thing is definitely manpower. Manning represents a very high cost and this is where we initially had and still today, have hands on in operation and try to avoid, just like hiring a lot of people because we can do it ourselves. We need to be in operations.

The third thing which represents also high costs. If you don't have an IT team. It definitely building up the website building up an app or building up a WeChat store. This is where we looked into our friends and family network. If there was not someone who could like assist us in building a website, which also we found.

I think these are three major expenses that we're going on us. Definitely the personal expenses because we can't like, how do you say? Give us a payroll at this early stage. So, making sure that we are outside work we are living on a very low profile and making sure that we can survive here without spending all the money from the company.

BOOTSTRAP MARKETING
Since day one, we spend zero on the company marketing. The only cost we had in marketing was maybe was like for some like fairs that we took part of, but it was very, very little cost. The thing is we could, we don't have, we didn't have the budget for this marketing and we believe more in word-of-mouth. So, we believe that if we have a product which is, how do you say? Good enough, people will talk around this product and talk to their friends.

How we also managed to have a very low marketing cost was like doing like partnerships with already existing startups, existing company's we have already renamed here. Food bloggers, everything that we can do where we are increasing our visibility, our brand image in the city.

LEVERAGING SOCIAL MEDIA
We don't pay for influences. Again, I said, it's more we are going to food bloggers. We would maybe pay them in foods like we are trying to do this strategy of influence the influences. Where food bloggers who would try our food and then write on a blog post about us. Or, for instance, now we recently also started with some brand ambassadors. Like people who are working out in the gym or working out as a yoga teacher that they can influence their class. The people who are joining them in their class. Otherwise, was mainly social media was managed by ourselves. You have like WeChat, which is very strong here. Posting, accepting friends, trying to get like a big network of friends. Let's say posting on the asking people to post on their movements and so on and so forth.

BEST WAY TO INFLUENCE CONSUMERS

Yeah, basically it's a mix. It's like on a way its food porn in terms of food. So like attract the customers towards our foods, like showing them images of our food that we are doing.

BOOTSTRAPPING
Yeah, well hire the right team is definitely one of a very important factor. Then also yes, spend your money but wisely on marketing for instance. We didn't have money and we achieved pre a successful milestone without spending any money into marketing. So I think you don't need to get funding and suddenly like just spend all over marketing. You need really like to make like, I don't know, smart investment in this kind of field.

Another thing would be like don't spend all your money on like useless equipment, especially like in kitchen. You need a lot of equipment whereas it's fridges or knives or whatsoever. So, better to choose like a more safe way to spend money and like really like see what you need, really need rather than just buying all kind of equipment. Packaging as well, for us was like a big waste of money at the beginning because we were testing the waters. We were testing our concept and we were just buying packaging right and left.

Finally, we found ourselves with, I don't' know, more than 2,000 boxes which we were not using. So definitely these are important things.

WHAT'S THE MISSION?
I think we are trying to change the future of food delivery. We really want that people have access to health foods, trusted meals with healthy meals using trusted ingredients. So we really want to disrupt this market of food delivery and fast foods by giving like products which are very like healthy for your body, but also like very using like clean ingredients. Like something that you can really trust.

So what are we, what we are trying to solve here and what we are, our mission really to disrupt this food delivery market. We want to give people access to clean food and healthy meals. So this is where we are trying to disrupt all this food delivery and fast food industry.

SCALING WITH LIMITED RESOURCES
Well, I think we have a pretty smart business concept where it's pretty easy to scale because you can all like produce centrally and then dispatch in like further delivery units. You don't need to control or build up a kitchen for each of your units. You just need to build up delivery hubs. If you go in cities and then just like build up a central kitchen and then be able to dispatch to the oldest units you can scale pretty fast in a short period of time.

CHINA. IT'S HUGE
I think China is a huge market. That's what makes it so interesting. It's so big and there's so many people here. Which makes it like anyone, not any conept can be successful here. But it gives you a lot of room even if you have, even if it's highly competitive market, it gives you enough room for you to get your customers and then operate your business.

YOUNG ADVANTAGE
Well, at the end of the day, we both, we don't' have a family so if we fail and now we will try to do something again. Maybe fail again and if we don't have like something that, yeah that where we have to succeed in the first concept we are launching. I think is even if we proven with our old concept we failed fast, we modified the business model, we switched, we made a pilot and then we try it again.

This is what we are both strongly believe in. We will keep moving and keep trying until we have the right market fit and keep failing, that's for sure.

BIGGEST FAILURE
I think you know, we were I think we were pretty frustrated at the beginning when we tried this initial concept. Because we believe in our, in one concept, but it was not what the market was asking for. So this is where we learned on actually you need to listen to what the market is demanding rather than listening to yourself and just think this could be a great concept.

For more interviews from the "Entrepreneurs for Good" series, check out the playlist here.

Stay tuned for more clips and full interviews in the coming weeks.

by Rich

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URBAN FARMING IN HONG KONG

THE GOAL OF URBAN FARMING

CAN ROOFTOPS FEED HK?

GOING ALL IN

EARLY LESSONS

SEGMENTATION AND FOCUS

PERFECTING THE GRIND

PERSONAL RISK

SCALE

MEASURING SUCCESS

TIPS TO VIEWERS

This interview is about identifying a problem, and building systems that address that problem and bring a measurable impact.

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BACKGROUND

MANAGING RISK

GETTING STARTED

SETTING UP

TRUSTING PROCESS

VOLUNTEERS

CASH FLOW

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HONG KONG STARTUP SCENE

WOMEN WHO CODE

CULTURAL (&OTHER) BARRIERS TO WOMEN

TACTICS FOR BETTER ENGAGEMENT

KNOWING WHEN TO ITERATE

BUILDING COMMUNITIES

EARLY LESSONS

LEARNING FROM FAILURE

ADVICE TO ASPIRING ENTREPRENEURS

GETTING GOOD ADVICE

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This interview is about wanting to change the world, being surrounded by great people, and learning (fast) from mistakes

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About Arch

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ARCH WONGCHINDAWEST - SOCIAL GIVER

THE BIG CHALLENGE

TURNING DONORS INTO BUYERS

CURRENT SIZE AND IMPACT

SOCIAL MEDIAL & ENGAGEMENT

CONTENT (STRATEGY)

WHY SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP?

MOTIVATION

(SOCIAL) ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN BANGKOK

HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD...

Peggy's story is one of a passion for food, and the commitment to delivering on that passion every day

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About Peggy Chan

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About the Entrepreneurs For Good Series

About Pat Dwyer

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BACKGROUND

TAKING THE LEAP

DEVELOPING FOCUS

BUILDING A BUSINESS

SELLING SUSTAINABILITY

REDEFINING WORK

WORDS OF WISDOM