David McCaughan

Shock & Awe Marketing for Social Entrepreneurs | David McCaughan, Bibliosexual

In this episode of Entrepreneurs For Good, I speak with David McCaughan about his career as a marketer and story teller, his entrance into post-corporate entrepreneurship, and how social entrepreneurs need to deploy a shock & awe marketing tactics alongside their constant effort to tell their story of the organization.


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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 David

Currently based in Hong Kong Dave has spent the last three decades in Asia Pacific leading strategy planning and in senior management roles with McCann , one of the world’s largest advertising and communication companies.

Dave joined McCann in 1986 in his native Sydney where he built the Strategic Planning function and subsequently since 1995 has been based in Bangkok, Hong Kong and Tokyo leading regional strategy and communication campaign development for clients including Coca-Cola , MasterCard, Nestle, Cathay Pacific, Sunstar, Hitachi, Johnson&Johnson and many others’.

After a decade based in Tokyo Dave returned to Hong Kong in early 2014 but remains a constant visitor and commentator on marketing in Japan.

He has an extensive history of working on the implications of media changes, how society is influenced by and influences them. Amazingly still seen as an Asian thought leader on youth marketing ( despite the hair) he is also leading key initiatives into the aging markets of Asia.

Dave has talked at over 500 conferences globally and has been a regular columnist for journals like Advertising Age, Japan Close-Up. He is a board member and contributor for ESOMAR’s Research World.

In 2015 Dave initiated BIBLIOSEXUAL , a consultancy that brings together his long term passion for understanding the interaction of people and media with brands and stories. He describes a bibliosexual as “someone who understands the relationship between form and content and that for different people one may be more relevant than the other”

Follow David
Website: https://davemccaughanbibliosexual.wordpress.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dave.mccaughan
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmccaughan/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bibliosexuality


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
Snapchat: http://snapchat.com/add/richbrubaker
Instagram: https://instagram.com/richbrubaker
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/richbrubaker

Contact Rich
[email protected]


Full Interview Transcript

DAVID MCCAUGHAN
BIBLIOSEXUAL

RICH: Welcome back everybody, Rich Brubaker here. Collective Responsibility. Here with Dave McCaughan. We are here to talk today about engagement. He has 30 years in marketing/advertising industry. Shock and all and how sustainability, social entrepreneurs can deploy these tools to advance their issues.

INTRODUCTION

RICH: Do me a favor and introduce yourself, your background, what you've been working over the last 30 years in Asia.

DAVID: I'm an Aussie from Sydney, actually from a place called Paramania from the outskirts of Sydney. Library Science Degree, Political since degree. I worked as a children's librarian as a storyteller for 10 years in public libraries in Australia. Accidently got a job in advertising, like literally. Applied for job not knowing it was an ad agency. They didn't tell me until the second phone call that it was actually a job at an ad agency.

The day I started working they asked me what I wanted to do. I said I don't know, what do you want me to do? They said we don't know. I say that with that company with about 30 years and never had a job description.

Then about 3 years ago I decided, well mutual decision to part ways with the big company, which is fine by me. Moved back here to Bangkok and set up a couple little companies or co-set up a couple little different companies to do different aspects of marketing/storytelling. Wanted to partly do it in the traditional things in how you develop stories and why people are attracted to stories and use stories. Then the other side primarily using the sort of more advanced in how to use intelligence to explore narratives across the internet.

BECOMING AN ENTREPRENEUR

RICH: So I guess my first question is, entrepreneur right now is very romantic idea of a lot of people and love to talk about wanting to jump out to start their own thing. You've done that.

DAVID: Let me stop you right there. One of the big bump I've had for years and years is this concept that you can't be entrepreneurial if you work for a company. Now, I always use the example as I said for most of the 28 years I worked for this big American corporation, I didn't have a job description, I was allowed to do what I wanted a lot of the time.

I created for example, I created a research platform out of South East Asia that became the global research platform for this multinational company. I created a whole bunch of other tools, ways to access different bits of business, looks at types of business to go in there. For me, that is entrepreneurial. It's got nothing to do with going off and starting my own business. By the token, the last few years is this word entrepreneur is being over used, over used, over used.

If you are the nice lady behind the camera here and she decides to go off and she wants to start a bakery tomorrow and make cakes and sell cakes on a corner store. I don't call that entrepreneurial. Why? It's great, there's nothng wrong with it. It isn't entrepreneurial because millions of other young woman across Asia have gone off in the last 10 years and pray to cakes selling them out of a shop. That's not entrepreneurial, that is not being a risk taker that's actually the opposite of being a risk taker.

RICH: Because you know it's safe enough.

DAVID: Because the model is out there. Everybody's done it. Thousands of people have done it. The only risk is that you're an idiot. Are you going to pick somewhere that's obviously the wrong location? Do you make really shitty cakes? Obviously are you really bad at personal service?

But entrepreneurism is a thing that I have no problem with the fact that it's circle booming, but I have a problem when we think it's limited to individuals going off starting a brand new business in some way. I also think that one of the issues with entrepreneurism and with it the parallel thought of being a risk taker and the risk taking is good. Since LinkedIn and Facebook, etc have been mass popularize, you can't click on one of those without seeing some usually misplaced or misused quote about the fact that you learn by mistakes. If you don't fail you wont' learn. The truth is that most people that fail, just fail. Failure is never good. Failure just means 99% of cases failure means disaster. It means going hungry, never getting back up again. So it's not about you learn by failure, because most people can't learn by failure. It's you learn by success.

HOW SOCIAL ENTERPRENEURS CREATE ENGAGEMENT

RICH: Now actually, this actually is probably with our early conversation with not profit. I know you work with WTO, World Toilet Organization, the other WTO.

DAVID: The other WTO.

RICH: Jack. He's passionate about what he believes is his vision. How do these entrepreneurs create that message or better align..what's the process that you go through?

DAVID: Living in the world...we talked about before we went on camera we talked about the way society has changed. Urbanization and the desire to move into the middle class. The defining technology of middle class is a flushing indoor toilet, not a mobile phone.

As somebody pointed out to me in some research I did with newly urbanized families a number of years ago. Said, look my cousin's up in the village living basically wooded grass shacks. They have color televions. Some have refrigerators. Some have mobile phones and some have microwaves. If you can steal electricity from the highway, you can run those things, but none of them, none of them have put me into the net, which is the term she used, put me into the net. The net was the sewer syste because that is the defining technology of urbanization. The defining technology of modern life.

EMPATHY & ENGAGEMENT

RICH: On thing I struggle with is helping people from outside help what's going on, understanding what's going on locally. What you just mentioned. Most Westerners, lets just called most US, they have no idea what it means to be without public toilets. If you gotta use the lue, you got a mall or something or you've in your car. How do you talk to that group differently than you do to say the local population? Either they really understand the problem, some of them are looking for solutions and some of them are gong to act on them. That's a whole different story. But if you need the Western side to empathize, have compassion...

DAVID: Well, one of the things is you do the things like the toilet run, which we started doing, the WTO started running in more developed cities and different parts of the world. It's one of those goofy things and if you're lucky you get a photo and a couple things. Stuff like that. You're not gonna get...it's not the ice bucket challenge and take over the world. But I think what you do is one for the things you have to do is it's like shock and awe.

I'll give you an example. If you're in America, Western Europe, Australia the developed western world. Most of those countries have a population developing crisis. Maybe not quite at the level of Japan, but if you're Italy, my wife is Italian. she has 3 living aunts who all are in late 80s-90s in Italy. One of the things you do is you raise awareness. Guys our age will have ourselves or our wives will have parents who are in their 80s-90s and most invariably most in their 50s or 60s has at least one parent still alive. Or one in-law parent still alive.

You know when you get to your 70s and 80s, I mean you watch it. People basically judge where they are going to go by the availability of toilets. They do. Talk to anybody in these bit cities in any big developed western city and talk to anybody in their 80s about where they normally go, what is their normal routine in the week. I guarantee you they know where every toilet is that they normally go. I go to this mall once on a Thursday to do shopping and I can tell you where the toilet is at. I like to go for a beer with my ol buddies three times a week and that pub's got a toilet and it's easy to get into.

So what you do is take it away and take it away and say to the people who are more their son and daughters ages 40s, 50s, and 60s. So now you gotta a mother, she's 80, she's a nice lady, but she's never going to have access to a public toilet again. Holy shit...what are you going to do with that? Where they going to go?

RICH: Connecting on a day to day personal level.

DAVID: Everyone is personal. Shock and awe always comes down to the things that really, really worry us.

SHOCK & AWE

RICH: What I find with a lot of social issues that are environment are that the people you are helping, you can bring this message to and talk about the benefits and impact. Then you have to switch tact. You have to find donors, government, average twitter users to click into your message. As someone who spent 30 years in that, how difficult is that? What are some things that social entrepreneurs who have a small team, how should they tackle that?

DAVID: Shock and awe. If you think about the big brands in the world. Yes, of course now they we take them for granted. That's because they spend mass amounts of money to keep themselves in your face. Then go back in history to most of the big brands that we associate with, what made them successful in the first place? They didn't have massive TV spans, or massive putting every time you clicked on your FB page there was an ad running along side with your favorite beer.

Most of these things were because at some point they did something or they had a line or they had an angle that the relative world space that we are playing in grabbed your attention. The truth, those sort of ads and campaigns they can't help to get at people. They don't get at everybody. The truth is that hard hearted people and there are people that don't care. But there is going to be a large enough lump of people quite often that that one photo alone will shock and awe people into it.

TEARS OR SMILES?

RICH: How do you keep attention? Do you use crying babies or do use happy teenagers who benefited from the process.

DAVID: You're right. That's quite often the shock and awe has to be dialed down in different ways. The truth is we've had the crying babies thing for since the 70s. Literally the 70s. Yes, you can still do it slightly different photographic ways or whatever. The truth is, for the most of us it is sort of a background noise that we've been seeing a lot. But you are right, the shock and awe of it becomes personalization. We start to see some things where in today's world, a bit like you are doing. You create, YouTube type messages, films, whatever that are about peoples' experiences.

MAINTAINING ENGAGEMENT

RICH: Social media is tough. Because it's moving so fast. It's not just shock and awe, it's a consistent shock and awe. So how do you like...

DAVID: So here's the thing. ALS, the ice bucket challenge. Really great, obviously had a huge impact.

RICH: Raised 60 million dollars

DAVID: Raised 60 million bucks. Obviously big into the business for the next year the number of companies, nothing to do with ALS, nothing to do with disease, charities The number of FMCG companies that come in and say we need an ALS ice bucket type of campaign. Don't be ridiculous. It's a bit of a fluke. I mean it is a bit of a fluke to be that successful.

RICH: What do you think made it work if you break it down?

DAVID: I think that it helps that there is not much else going on. So you know quite obviously, if it was in the middle of the Trump madness YouTube everything else before is full of that. If it's in the middle of what's his name up in North Korea gong off again and the worked gets distracted. If you are in the middle of summer and especially in the US and there's not anything really big going on that helps. So timing helps. What else is happening around you helps.

CHOOSE THE BEST TACTIC

RICH: You probably had 10, 15, 100 ideas. How do you narrow down what's the best idea? How do you know what the lay down in Giza is verses something just so.

DAVID: First, you have to understand what people want. The second thing you gotta understand are the cultural things that go on. There are things in some countries that you can't or cultures you can't do and others you can't. The simple act of saying, look we are going to, with police permission because it's Japan, with police permission, we are going to block off a section of the Ginzo or the route around the imperial palace and a bunch of people lay down there. Wow, that is pretty shocking. That is pretty wow.

What you are looking is for something that is going to draw a bit of a crowd, but the journalists are going to look at. That film cameras are going to turn up for. Because you have to have the stuff that is going to appear on, depending on the country, on the mainstream media. You/d would love e to get your 60 seconds on CBS or BBC or whatever. That's ok, in Japan that's a little easier to manipulate. What you really want to get is 50 people filming and it showing up on YouTube or Facebook.

RICH: What is more important now? Getting HKTV to give you a 60 second air?

DAVID: Depends on the country.

RICH: Depends on the country.

DAVID: It depends on the culture. Again, we think of social media in certain ways. Those of us that are in communications business. Because we are trying for that by basically by the American models and the American marketing media. But if you look at simple things like if you compare Japan to the United States. I always often say the look, those are two no more dark, metrically opposed than Japan and the United States. In so many ways.

But if you look at it this way, in a survey that was done a couple of years ago of mothers in about, I think we did it in about 30 countries around the world, we asked about 1000 mothers a bunch of questions in each country. One of those questions was, ok when you think aobut your toddler, your infant, what is the beset source of information if you are going to be buying goods - food, clothes, whatever for your infant. Not surprising number 1 was your mother. So if you are a new mother, you ask your mother, older sisters, best friends. So, people who physically really know and you've known for years and years.

Now, of course things like blogs come up. They are high everywhere. But the difference between Japan and America was? One of the highest scoring things in Japan was broadcast television. Why? Because it's the number 1 social media in Japan? Why is it the number one social media? Because Japan is a collectivist country. Everything is based on what every body else doing it. So if you see it on broadcast television, it's s safe bet. If I see it's on a blog, I'm not to sure how many people have seen that blog.

RICH: Interesting. So you got to know your market.

DAVID: You got now what matters to people their culture that's going on and what will work.


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.


Michael Biedassek

Moving Tourists from Awareness to Social Impact | Michael Biedassek, Bangkok Vanguards

In this episode of Entrepreneurs For Good, I speak with Michael Biedassek, Founder of Bangkok Vanguards, about his work to create socially responsible and sustainable tours around Bangkok.

Through our conversation we speak about how he approaches sustainable tourism, building his company, and how he looks to balance profit making (in the tourism industry) against social impact.



I never studied entrepreneurship, or even written a proper business plan.  I just do what I am passionate about.


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 Michael

Back in Germany, his passion for Thailand earned him the title Mr. Thailand who drew maps of Bangkok by heart as a remedy against his Thailand withdrawal symptoms. Today he’s the founder and multitasking explorer of Bangkok Vanguards.
Michael considers himself a bridge and connector between his German and Asian roots and designs offbeat and meaningful travel adventures reflecting to his passion for exploration, Thailand’s communities, people and changemakers. - See more at: https://www.pata.org/michael-biedassek/#sthash.pcEd9jMe.dpuf

Follow 
Website: http://bangkokvanguards.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michael.biedassek
Twitter: https://twitter.com/germansiamese
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-biedassek-28492769/


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

RICH: So, Michael, thank you very much for the time you've taken with us today. Busy afternoon. Do me a favor and tell me a little bit about yourself and what you are doing here in Bangkok.

MICHAEL: Well, my name is Michael. I am half Thai half German. I am from Germany, I've been here 15 years and I'm running a small travel company called Bangkok Vanguards. Basically I am trying to balance entrepreneur and being a tour guide showing people the inside of Bangkok.

INTRODUCTION

RICH: How are you adding social entrepreneurship, social elements into your tours?

MICHAEL: For me, first and foremost what inspires me, outside. They physical rims of the city. Alleys and things we originally perceive as of the human stories behind it because it's human who make/create culture who make the places. Due to my relationships with people they have inspired me, which I have learned a lot. I want to convey those stories to the visitors to better understand the city from a human perspective.

CREATING EMPATHY

RICH: How do you do that? You've got foreigners likely coming in and there're just in shock and awe at everything that's been happening here, but then you take them down these quiet little alleys. What do you hope they take away from here?

MICHAEL: I'm hoping that they see Bangkok not as just a polluted, hot, busy city. A lot of people they have this _____ (1:31) against big cities, but taking inspiring stories into account on how people attempting to improve the quality of life of themselves and their community. It gets them to reflect about their own way of life back home and to compare. I think from that people we learn a great deal and get a better understanding of what makes human life in cities.

WHY DO THIS?

RICH: How did you come up with it to begin with? Most travel agents are just trying to make more money. Sounds like you're, you've had to take spend a lot more time developing that story, developing that pattern. So why are you doing this?

MICHAEL: Because I speak Thai. I have access to the people because I like to talk to people, I am interested in people, and I have the ability to build relationships. So there are people that truly inspire me and make me think I am better understand why the things are the way they are. Sometimes that makes me think then, how could that be with all the resources that we have that still that people that do great work doing don't get any exposure or support. That was the trigger for me to get more exposure to these people.

HOPES AND DREAMS

RICH: What is it about the city that is attracting people? What are their hopes and dreams here?

MICHAEL: I think for regular people that I met or that I know is basically they have children, so the children go to school. They have the social structures and everyone is collaborating in that kind circumstance. This has evolved over years. I think in the countryside it is even hard in terms of economic opportunity so Bangkok is still the hub. There is a chance to may definitely make more money than being a farmer outside in the countryside.
I think that there hopes and dreams often like their off spring for them to have them a better future, to have a better education. Go day by day and maybe not thinking to deep about the negativity but making the best of what you got and being happy with what you have.

CUSTOMER REACTIONS

RICH: What is it that when you take a group in and you show them this, what is theire natural reaction to some of this stuff? What is your goal of exposing people to this?

MICHAEL: I think their reactions to it...a lot of people come to this they are repeated travelers and they love Thailand. They love the people. the love the heritage the cultural aspects. So I often tell them that a lot for things that we experience in our tours is limited edition because of the development is going on. Then sometimes we question development. What does development actually mean? Does it mean copying models like Singapore and applying that to Bangkok, which is in a very different context. By seeing and meeting the people, they feel that they want to do something.

Like yesterday I had guests, they came to us and I have a tour with them today as well. They went to a primary school that is accessible only from the rail tracks, so there are cargo trains going through. They have about 200 children kindergarten age and we brought new laptop. The teachers didn't even have a proper laptop functioning. That because through that exposure. Sometimes not on the tour but on sometimes what we communicate on line and people talk about it and they want to see it by themselves instead of going to a big organization. They saying Michael, _____(4:48) so there is something tangible and they talk to the director, they talk to the teacher, they learn about the education system and the challenges and the disparity between the haves and have-nots.

MONEY VS SOCIAL IMPACT

RICH: Some people say, "Oh, you're taking advantage of them because you're making money and then you cant' effectively help the people that you are engaging in at the local level." Where do you fall there? You have to manage the business, but also do the best job you can to really generate social engagement. What is the balance for you?

MICHAEL: For me, I have to look at myself and think ok. I'm still struggling with it as an individual person. I consider myself on one side when I'm out there I am a tour guide and on the other hand I'm heading an organization. At the moment, I have to look at it from the perspective of a tour guide. I try to bring in the theme of sustainability. That encompasses a lot of topics, communities, economic development and so on.

If you look at the long term strategy I have to think in terms of organization structure to make it scalable. To achieve that I need to have financial resources in order to hire a team. So we have to look at the business aspect that will empower us to create the structures and to execute on a more sustained and long-term social impact strategy.

BUILDING THE ORGANIZATION

RICH: Let's talk about building your organization. I was just at your office. It's a small office. What do you, what are you trying to do organizationally so you can have a bigger impact going forward. Is it hiring more people? What are the challenges you face in building up your organization?

MICHAEL: In terms of the challenge working in tourism. If you want to do good things as a head of an organization, you can be as into this as you want. The people with the guest are the tour guides. You need to have the right guide to facility the experience, but they need to feel also passionate about the things that you represent as an organization as well. That is one of the challenges. Having licensed guys, the language ability, plus their awareness and passion to do something about it. Recruitment, manpower, that is our current challenge.

RICH: Is it really a recruitment problem or is it a cash flow problem?

MICHAEL: No, for now a recruitment problem.

RICH: So you have the money, you can't find the people.

MICHAEL: Most of the time we have to work as freelancers. Because the tour guide if there is not enough jobs, then you pay them and they will be sitting in the office doing nothing.

RICH: Do those tour guides have to care about the communities as much as you do? Like you need them to do you work so...

MICHAEL: I don't think as...I can't expect to care as much as me, but there should be a certain baseline which they have empathy with people and are curious to feel connected and want to learn more about these issues. That is I think the bottom line. From there as they grow with us, I hope of course that we can get them more involved and get them a better understanding of what the challenges are in Bangkok.

CATALYZING INDUSTRY CHANGE

RICH: What would you do differently or you wish that the traditional tourism industry did better when it comes to bridging the economy with these issues?

MICHAEL: As an industry as a whole, probably that we put the discussion into the public or political decision makers that we don't see our heritage that is from the people. Not just only from the religious side, the government side, the state or the king, but from the people themselves. That they are not a liability but an asset to the city. I think that if we as entrepreneurs in the tourism industry recognize the importance and the value of those...that heritage maybe some decision makers will say its not, it's also a long term benefit for Bangkok finically and economically.

MILLENNNIA CONSUMERS

RICH: Right now the world is full of millennials who want to do more social good. You have hipsters who love yoga pants and avocado, like you have an entire market shifting towards better stuff right now. How is this benefitting you? What are you seeing from your side right now? Are there more people interested in these tours? Not just yours, but in general. Is there more people interested in this space right now?

MICHAEL: From what I heard, I suppose yes. That people are...if they consume that they want to be more responsible consumers and they are more conscious of what they consume. The same goes for when they travel. So they may be direct or indirectly some positive contributions which lead back again to social impact. What are we actually creating other than educating people.

Talking to people on the tour, I notice that there is awareness and there is a wiliness to actually go beyond. They stay in touch afterwards. They send us a telex talk and say hey, guess what they do in San Francisco? When it comes to ___(10:05) maybe you should take a look at this. We stay connected with a lot of our travelers who have become our advocates or supporters of what we do and believe in that type of building, community is something great.

SETTING UP IN BANGKOK

RICH: What...If you were talking to an entrepreneur an aspiring entrepreneur who wanted to set up a shop in Bangkok, what are a few tips you would give them about how to set up and fund their business model?

MICHAEL: Ha! Whoa. First of all, whatever you start whatever you do you have to really ask yourself is that something that you feel that is your, yourself. Is it in line with our values, in line with what you are passionate about because it is...everyone wants to be self employed and the notion of freedom and all that. It inspires people and it's happy, but it is a marathon.

Not even talking about the products side and everything, but generally just starting out and then being in the water and then learning by doing. I never studied entrepreneurship. I have never read a proper business plan, I just do what I am passionate about. But the knowledge is out there so we can tap in to our networks of our friends who have bigger friends that can help us to take one hurdle at a time. But, if you are not passionate or do not believe in what you do, then you know even a medium size hurdle can lead to throwing in the towel.

REMANING MOTIVATED

RICH: I was having a conversation about that if you are not passionate about the issue, then you're never going to start a business on it. Even if you start a business, you're never really going to fulfill the mission of that business. You're going lose passion over time. How do you remain passionate about this issue? What is it that gets you up every morning? What do you love to see?

MICHAEL: What I love to see is like to create more experiences that have more impact. I see myself still at the very, very, very beginning for things. Right now I have stabilized our enterprise. We have bookings coming in. We are building a following of support. I'm having a strong core team now. We haven't even tapped fulfilling into the potential of what we do.

With all the networks and everyone that is here in the city of Bangkok, there is so many potential synergies I want to go one at a time. I think I don't have enough years of my life and the day doesn't have enough hours to pursue all this. That keeps me going.

TELLING THE STORY WELL

RICH: How do take that to other forms? How do you make sure that when you tell a story that it has real impact? Is there a way to do that through like humans of Bangkok mindset?

MICHAEL: I see it as a research and learning process. That content that I research and that I learn in the process I pass it on to either the travelers or I pass it onto my guides now to get them trained in these aspects. Then the third to raise awareness online. It can be through social media, through blogs, but then as always the time limitation because that's kind of generalist work that we are doing. You need to actually put a really heavy focus on it. You can't really do it as a side.

If you run out being a guide, then running the company, then a blogger. You need a team that really believes in what you do. So that is going to be my job connecting creative storytellers, photographers, or videographers to the work that we do. Then creating content and educators inspires and then when people get exposures to each of the story, there is something they can also experience here in Bangkok.

A STORY OF IMPACT

RICH: Tell me a story of a tour that you gave or a person that you met that you hold on to yourself and just like wow, that had a real impact on you.

MICHAEL: Whoa, which one! Maybe the Bye Bye China Town Tour. The Bye Bye China Town Tour is basically a walk through the one of the oldest, largest and most successful China Towns worldwide. I got to know a group of activist that are fighting for the conservation of their neighborhoods, which is located on the new MRT lines, new subway lines. Seeing what they do, listening to them and seeing the struggles and then realizing this uphill battles, which is so symptomatic for how society is structured.

Something that is still like very much a part of you know the experience that I run. The story that I want to create very soon as well. These people that are proactive citizens they're so many out there and I want to track them all down. Basically. I think that's connecting resources to these people.


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.


Jessica Cheam

There is No Replacement for Quality | Jessica Cheam, Eco-Business

Oover the last 10 years, Jessica Cheam has been focused on building Asia's first sustainability news desk, Eco-Business, and through this episode of Entrepreneurs For Good, I dive into the hill that she had to climb to build Asia's first (and only) sustainability focused newsroom.

How she has learned to tell the story of sustainability across traditional and social mediums, and how she is having to adjust her business model to adapt to a very challenging business environment.



I think it is important to hang onto "why" we are doing this. If we are going to live to 120, then you can either do something with your life or waste it away.


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 Jessica

Jessica Cheam is the managing editor of Eco-Business. She is an award-winning journalist, TV presenter and social entrepreneur, with a particular expertise in sustainable development. She was formerly the political and environment correspondent for The Straits Times and is an adjunct research associate at the Centre for Liveable Cities. She is the author of Forging a Greener Tomorrow: Singapore's Journey from Slum to Eco-City, and is also the presenter of a Channel NewsAsia documentary on climate change.

Follow
Website: http://eco-business.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jesscheam
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jcheam
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicacheam/


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
Snapchat: http://snapchat.com/add/richbrubaker
Instagram: https://instagram.com/richbrubaker
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/richbrubaker

Contact Rich
[email protected]


Full Interview Transcript

ECO-BUSINESS

RICH: Welcome back everybody. I'm here with Jessica Cheam from Eco-Business. Here to talk about her 8 year journey of starting off from a home business to now a platform of 15 people telling the stories of sustainability in Asia. It's a really informative, tactical interview about how she's done this. Thank you very much Jessica for your time.

JESSICA: Thank very much you Richard.

INTRODUCTION

RICH: Introduce yourself briefly and Eco-Business.

JESSICA: Ok. My name is Jessica Cheam. I'm Editor of Eco-Business. Eco-Business is the only media publication in Asia Pacific dedicated to reporting on sustainable development. We started in 2009. It's now almost 10 years and we are still going. So yeah, it's good. I'm glad!

RICH: A little bit about your background. How did you get into this? Why did you decide to start this platform?

JESSICA: I have been a journalist all my life and still am. I started at the straight Times, which is Singapore's national newspaper. I was being frustrated with the fact that mainstream media wasn't really reporting on climate change or sustainability development. So I kind of started it like as an experiment. Journalist were writing for free, but after a while everybody got busy and I wasn't quite sure that it would work, but then my business partner and I then decided that we're going to try and turn it into a viable business model. One that has both social and environmental impact and when I finished up with ST in 2013, I came on full time and we've just been doing this every since.

GETTING STARTED

RICH: Now, I have found that getting people to read about sustainability is very tough proposition. What was it like early days? Like how did you get started? What were the earliest stories you were trying to tell?

JESSICA: Actually we started we tried to focus on trying to tell the stories of the people who were trying to respond to the crisis. I mean climate change has become so much more acute since we started. Somebody needs to tell that story. Somebody needs to tell the signs. So there were those kinds of story that we told. Then there were the positive stories. Like what were corporate doing. What were individuals doing in their communities. We focused on telling those stories. Because really everyone wants to go in that direction. They are not quite sure how, not sure how fast. It was important to have the conversation.

EARLY DAYS

RICH: It's you and your business partner. You got to do a lot of content development, your editing your technology, everything. What were the early days like?

JESSICA: It was just a very small team and demonstrated an editor. Trying to do as much as possible.

ADJUSTING TO SOCIAL MEDIA

RICH: You started before social media was really full force, so you still have the opportunity to write long form blogs. Did you start with long form and how have you over time had to adjust that to the social media reality of 200 words a quick picture, a meme? Like what did you start with and how did you learn through that process?

JESSICA: You know that is a really interesting question. I have to say that it's actually both. So when we started very much in the vain of traditional journalism we had the long form story. But we found out that people's attention were not really that...you don't really pay attention on social media. They scan and use article whatever, so we then to try write for that generation which was like 600-800 words Shorter pieces, good visuals. I will tell you something. There is no substitute for good journalism. We've now gone back to writing the big long special reports.

RICH: Do you actively sit there in front of a white board and say we have this category, this category, and this category and they like this and this. Do you try and plan all of it or are there a few things ad we do this and leave the other people behind?

JESSICA: Actually we have a few different types of content and we know what type of content works on which platforms. So I'll give you an example. On a daily basis our newsroom decides ok, which events we're going to over, which feature stories we will write and we dedicate ourselves to one special report. We know the special report are the long form format. We spend months producing that. The daily stuff we know that is going to be something that is read quite quickly, we try to keep it to 600-800 words.

Then when we post to social media, twitter, Facebook, Instagram and then we coach it to those platforms as a question or debate. So we have to write to the platform. We have to write to the target audience and I find that really helps.

LEARNING THE TOOLS

RICH: What are the best ways in how to write to the platform?

JESSICA: It really is trial and error as to how we determine what tone or voice to take with each platform. At the end of the day, you want to think up stories that are for the truth we are for accuracy, we are for transparency. We want to shed light on important issues. So that seriousness comes through, but we try to do it an engaging manner. So clever headline, questions, or something a little bit more interesting and we are still trying. Sometimes I read a post that my team has written and it's like oh my God, that's so boring who is going to ready that!? Then it's like try and try again and how do we get people engaged in the content.

MEASURING ENGAGEMENT

RICH: How do you measure engagement? How do you measure success of your trial and error or the long term how you have been doing?

JESSICA: It's down to numbers. Our website has been growing and readership. We just had a 10% increase of readers. More than one million page views. More than 150,0000 unique visitors a month. Our Facebook group keeps growing. Our Twitter followers keep growing. Now our stories get shared more and people are commenting more so we can see the engagement there. Then we use LinkedIn as well. So there are different ways that we engage people both offline and online and I think both are important that you have the community talk.

PAYING THE BILLS

RICH: Funding model. Journalism right now is going through a "come to Jesus" on how they make money. How do you guys make money as a new upstart?

JESSICA: We aren't that new anymore.

RICH: I mean in the media industry you are. You are only 8 years old. You have what, 15 full time? How do you make sure that they can eat when nobody else can seem to make a newspaper sustainable anymore.

JESSICA: I keep having to go to our partners and go look. You know what you are doing is you're funding journalism. Your funding media publication that is writing about stuff that nobody else is writing about. It's really important to have this conversation. Fortunately for us in the recent years, people understand that. Our revenue comes from marketing, advertising, events, video production.

RICH: Marketing/advertising means consulting to companies on marketing?

JESSICA: No, no. People advertise on our platform. The ads. The ads bring in the revenue. People advertise on our email newsletters. People advertise with us because they want their event to be well attended. They want their story to be told. Anything about the economy, the Street Times, and the NY Times. A lot of the advertising is from advertisers. But we are now branching to do a different one. We want to be citizen lead. That is why we launch EB Circle.

We hope that if it reaches a critical mass w e will get more funding from people who want to read us instead of relying on commercial funding. I think in the --- now generate millions of pounds from that model and it's more than half the operating revenue now comes from that. The main stream media scale is much larger, but you know we hope to get there.

VALUE PROPOSITION

RICH: So what is your sales pitch? Like we have a million page views a month, they are all good people. Like who is buying that? Which brand is like oh that's the most important eco system for me to access and I'm going to pay you like I would pay the economist,

JESSICA: We provide a lot of value to partners who know that we produce quality content, one. We reach decision makers, two. and we are also the centers of the conversations. We are the people who are leading the conversation. We provide a lot of services, but it is from editorial to communication needs to actually kind of being their partner, their friend in like just saying ok this is your story this is where you want to go. How do you do that? We generate our revue through that.

We actually do a lot of partnerships, not just revue generating. We partner with people like WWF on plastic pollution. We co-organize roundtables to advance the policy dialogue so we can see change. Change and impact is actually much, much more important for us than anything else.

MAKING ADJUSTMENTS

RICH: What are the ways that you use data and analytics to look at your platform? To figure out what's working, what's not. Then when you realize when something is not working, what are some for the basic adjustments that you will make to see if that will fix it to make the improvement?

JESSICA: We use Google Analytics for our platform and we have a really clear picture about whose reading us and their engagement. For our website, we have pretty engaged readers. Our average time is about 2 mins plus to 3 mins of engagement before they bounce off.

RICH: What's your bounce rate?

JESSICA: I can't remember right now. Ok, I'm going to give you my media kit! But, we use the analytics to see and actually we do this annual exercise, which should be monthly, where we have the top stories. We see which ones go viral, which ones don't. The list always goes over well. For example, the slightly heavier stuff like about finance tends to not do as well because they are a bit harder to digest.

Yea, we use the analytics to kind of adjust what we are going to cover. We try as much as possible to produce something that is readable. There is no substitute for producing readable stories.

LEARNING FROM OTHERS

RICH: There are a lot of interesting people doing a lot interesting things in new media. Do you look at how they tell stories, how they engage readers and do you bring that to yours? How are you learning through this process?

JESSICA: How we guide our coverage is that we look at things that have magnitude. So things that have big impact. Things that are global, but then also things that are very local. What are you doing in my community that is making a huge difference. We try to do cover stories. We always take the very journalistic approach so I wouldn't say that we have any one publication that we try to emulate. We try to have our own voice. But as much as possible we are also looking into how to make things more conversational and by posting on social media different things, we kind of figure it out.

BECOMING AN ENTREPRENEUR

RICH: I'm really curious how you went from a journalist to an entrepreneur now who has 15 staff. What has it been like going from a paid position where you are...

JESSICA: I think the hardest part is actually having to sell something. I use to just news gather and write. Now it's like I'm selling a value proposition. It's like do business with us and we can help you achieve x, y, z. That has been a really steep learning curve. But actually I would say it's not really even a sell so call, but kind of like a belief that the journalism that we are doing is important. Then going out to the market and be like hey, let's do something together and make something meaningful. That learning curve has been really steep for me. But what I would say that I really still love the journalist part a lot more.

Just came back from Antarctica it was just two weeks of glorious me time interviewing people filming documentaries, doing photography. It's so important to keep that creative side. I mean people come and read our content because we have good quality content. That is from the foundation of journalism that we come here. That enables us to then have a sustainable business in all senses of the word. I think journalism is very, very important.

GROWING PAINS

RICH: But then the organization level. What are some of the growing pains that you went through to go from you and your partner in a small nook of the house, to 15 people in a kosher space here?

JESSICA: I think a leap of faith was when we took our first office and actually believing that we're both going to make something out of this. Leaving a fulltime job was also quite scary. You just have to have that faith. Trust me there have been many times we said we should just shut the business and we'd make more money if we go and join a big corporation. But then there was no one doing this and if we shut it down, it'd be like who else is going to do that?

You know, fortunately we've now got to critical mass where we have enough readers and enough reoccurring revenue that we can fund a newsroom. So that is really, really good. But our aim is really in 5 years time is to become even bigger. Maybe even global and not just cover Asia. But to have an office in every Asian country just to cover the issues that matches that specific market. That is where we want to be.

FOUNDATIONS FOR SUCCESS

RICH: That's an expensive proposition. If you think about that, let's say if told you in 10 years from now you would have 8 offices across major Asian markets or at least Shanghai, Bangkok, Dakar, Delhi, Dacca. What do you doing today to put your brand there for 10 years from now? What do you have to do?

JESSICA: Actually this is a really interesting questions. Actually its the talk of the market. So I have stringers in most of the Asian cities and they are the ones covering the stories that matter. What is actually a little bit of a challenge is then finding business to cover the cost. Obviously journalism cost money, writers cost money. So how do we find partners for funding to actually go in a market and say hey I want to cover those stories. Actually you find that actually once you get your stories there, you 're covering a market then people have interest. So it's an chicken to the egg issue. We have to grow organically. We have to grow in that way, but really there is no substitute for it.

RICH: 25yo Jessica is watching this. She's wondering how I can change the world and use my voice. What are 3 pieces of advice you would give her?

JESSICA: Like don't start a business? No, I'm kidding! I mean sometimes I say that. No, well actually really it's to really persevere really. I think that's the one thing there will be times where you be very, very discourages, but try and keep the faith and see where you want to go. Think about things in 10- 20 year horizon instead of a 3 year horizon.

The other advice is like find good people. You're only as good as your team. You really need to surround yourself with people who inspire you, people who are better than you. People who can see your vision and can help you get there. I think that's really important.

STAYING INSPIRED

RICH: How do you wake up every day to feel inspired?

JESSICA: I think it's really important to kind of hang on to why you are doing this. Is that yes, we are going to live like you said to like 120. Do you want to do something with your life or do you want to kind of waste it away? We are a blip on this planet and in this universe. Really, what do you want to do with that time with this very short span of time?


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.


Jack Sim

Building Awareness, Trust, and Toilets | Jack Sim, World Toilet Organization

In this episode of Entrepreneurs For Good, I speak with Jack Sim, Founder of the World Toilet Organization, the "other" WTO.

More than happy to talk shit, pun intended, Jack's mission of ensuring the world has access to toilets is dependent on our ability to openly talk about the problems.

It is an interview that I came away with a much greater understanding of the importance of awareness, and some key tips about creating engagement on even the most difficult of topics.

Jack is a force to be reckoned with, and the world is better place for it!



What matters is your intention. Which has to come out very very clearly, and when people understand your intention they start to trust you.


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 Jack

Founder of World Toilet Organization (WTO), has been a successful businessman since age 24. Having achieved financial success in his 40s, Jack felt the need to change his direction in life and give back to humanity – he wanted to live his life according to the motto “Live a useful life”. Jack soon left his business and embarked on a journey that saw him being the voice for those who cannot speak out and fighting for the dignity, rights and health for the vulnerable and poor worldwide.

Jack discovered that toilets were often neglected and grew concerned that the topic was often shrouded in embarrassment and apathy; talking toilets was taboo! Jack felt this led to the neglect of restrooms island wide. In 1998, he established the Restroom Association of Singapore (RAS) whose mission was to raise the standards of public toilets in Singapore and around the world.

It soon became clear that there were no channels available to bring these organisations together to share information, resources and facilitate change. There was a lack of synergy. As a result, in 2001, Jack founded the World Toilet Organization (WTO) and four years later, the World Toilet College (WTC) in 2005.

Follow 
Website: http://worldtoilet.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jack.sim.1671
LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-sim-75732313b/


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
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: Welcome back everybody. We are here with Jack Sim from the WTO. That's the World Toilet Organization. Just had a phenomenal conversation about the importance of communication and why now is the time to talk about poop. So please join us. Jack, thank you very much for your time. This has been phenomenal.

INTRODUCTION

RICH: Thank you very much for your time. Give me a brief introduction about yourself and the WTO.

JACK: My name is Jack Sim. I am the founder of the World Toilet Organization. I created the WTO because the subject of toilet and sanitation was so taboo and neglect that they call it what the agenda. Which, doesn't make sense.

SANITATION IN ASIA

RICH: What's the big problem that Asia is facing with sanitation?

JACK: The main immediate thing we want to talk about immediately is about the 2.5 billion people who do not have toilets. So why can't we talk about a preventative medicine that is so effective that you don't really have to need so much hospital and nurses and doctors, which is very expensive. Just prevent them from having the disease first by washing their hands, about flushed toilet, not having the flies spread it and by not polluting the river.

So this is the beginning.

RICH: Is it getting better? Are people talking about it? Are there parts of Asia that are talking about it? Are there parts that won't talk about it?

JACK: I think that in the last 18 years since the founding of the WTO, the media has loved this subject so much. So this romance of the love with the global media has been the biggest change because the media legitimized the subject. So every time we talk about it, they write about it and part of it is also about this unique blend of humor and serious facts.

STARTING CONVERSATIONS

RICH: When you started, what were some of the conversations like? Were they really difficult back then, or was it....how did you find the right people to get started?

JACK: In the beginning the guys get very excited because they always want to talk about toilet and their wives always stopping them. Then the wives like, can we talk about something else? Then after while they start to realize the serious facts that ey, this is so important and then everybody talks about it.

RICH: When you were setting up the meetings, setting up the conversations, were there certain things that you realized that this is a good time? They are saying things that make me feel like its okay start talking? At that level?

JACK: So actually you should be able to talk about it in relation with any subject because toilet is so intimate for the person. You can talk about how, that is a very good starting point. How you teach the children to toilet train. You can even talk about your dogs. You can begin the conversation that then slowly you can talk about subject matter itself. But you can also talk about other people like the poor. You can talk about the enormous crisis that is going on in the pollution. I think depending on the person, is a very environment friendly person you can talk about the river. Then it all comes back.

MAINTAINING FOCUS

RICH: You get the conversation going, but the reality is conversation is different than toilets on the ground. How do you maintain a long-term focus when you're having short term conversations all the time?

JACK: I think if you are creating a ___3:55 you're not calculation what you will do. You are calculating what everybody will do. So the politicians are really, really gaining a lot of popularity votes and power by helping toilets to be build. People need it. Why would they do that if? Because then the people that they need it because upstream there was a driving of the man to the media talking about importance of toilets. Once they plant that seed in the head, hmmmm, we need to talk about toilet. It's so important. I think we need to improve that. It is dirty. That is not satisfactory.

It has to become unhappy and then the unhappiness drives the demand. The demand drives the supply. The vendors, the business man, the politician, the movie stars, the academy, the media...everybody take away something good for themselves. In the end, toilet gets built on the ground.

LEVERAGE SKILLSETS

RICH: Early on you were very successful. You retired at 40. What are the skills that you too into the WTO that you could think would be the most important for you?

JACK: It's the communication skills. So when you are doing business you are actually selling products, but you are in nonprofit organization, you are selling ideas and selling incentive. So it is very similar what we do in business of course is the individual communication as well so the graphics, the visuals. The things that we promote the product with is very similar to the nonprofit sector. The fact that I don't earn any money, don't draw any salary from doing this work, that also give a lot of creditability that people now ok, this guy is not getting something out of it. Altruism breeds a lot of following.

ALTRUISM VS PROFIT

RICH: Why do you believe that being altruistic brings you more credibility verses more profit? Because people use profit as a yard stick for business, but why is it altruism for nonprofit? Why cant it be impact for profit?

JACK: You can do that social enterprise and those models are pretty good. What matters is your intention and your intention has to come out very clearly and when people understand your intention, they start to trust you. See the difference between business and social work is that in business, you only kill all your competitors. You want to be the number one. In social work, you want to kill the problem. Therefore, you want as many competitors as possible to finish up this job. But if you are still thinking everybody stop, you don' save the world I save the world then something is crazy about your head, right?

So if you are in the social sector, you should let go no pun intended of what ever you try to hold to yourself and don't think about yourself so much, but think about the mission and you invite everybody. That's a beautiful destination lets go there together. People say I like it and then they join you. They also bring others and others join them. So a movement has no real need. It is a belief a system very near like a religion.

COLLABORATION

RICH: So how easier or difficult do you find it to collaborate with a lot of groups? I run an NGO myself, people are still competitive. People still want their brand. They still want their award. How have you found that process and how do you break through those people who want to hold on for themselves?

JACK: Trying to be famous is actually very self defeating because you come out here to do this work not because you want to be famous. You want to solve a problem. So the paparazzi, the awards, the recognition, the sadist, it is for the mission and if you always remember that everything that is visible is not about you, it is about the mission, then you are clean and your light weight and people trust you. Once you start to think that all the things about you are, then you're sick in the head and you start to shut down all the mission and you pin yourself in a corner and no one is going to believe you anymore because you are just an egomaniac.

I think to overcome that myths is a lot of self reflection to remind yourself don't enjoy it to much. What is that for? For the mission and that is the right answer and you keep doing that. I've seen a lot of police actually doing a lot of good and after a while this fame and status all this going to their head and it's so sad.

THE HYPE OF SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

RICH: I 've been talking about this for a while. Social entrepreneurialism as a theme became very hot about 8-10 years ago and really 5-8 in North Asia. A lot of people shifted from the mission to winning awards. You said it's very sad people you've seen. When you see someone go from mission to little bit more ego to ego maniac, how does that impact the way that they look at their organization? Why is it sad? What do you see happening that you see when that happens in their organization?

JACK: A lot of my colleagues actually enter into depression. The reason is that they could not detach themselves from the mission and the mission becomes themselves. Once they are unable to feed their hunger and cravings for being recognized, then its like a movie star who doesn't have a movie for the last 3 years and they enter depression. It's no good.

The important thing is to go back to those Zen practice like detachment, humility...you know that the Chinese have a woo war, you know that means no me. Those kind of things of course is important but for me to reach a very, very high level of that is to always conscious you are insignificant, but just a tool to do this work. If you start to do that, people like to use you as a tool, it is much better.

ADVICE FOR NEW ENTRANTS

RICH: What if you were 28yo who was entering this space for the firs time. You're developing your first idea for solving the same challenge. They're going to be looking for a little bit of awareness because they need a megaphone to tell people who their idea is better. What advice would you give to them as they are starting out now that you believe would help them long term?

JACK: Basically just two dominate feeling in a human being. One is love and the other is fear. If you love you start to give people love, you start to look at problems and just authentically address it. What will happen is that the reward comes immediately to you in the sense that you are very joyful because you are consciousness is opening up. So you're heart is starting to open up and you feel very happy about yourself. Nobody is giving this award, just you are making yourself happy.

Now if you are grabbing, grabbing attention, grabbing money, grabbing materials stuff, power, then you're consciousness start to narrow and you become very miserable because you are always have to get something. But if you don't get anything, then you will eel so happy and then young people are starting to understand this because they have no money because so they go to the spiritual journey. A lot of them if they don't give up and become good, they can of course get paid and get a salary out of it, but it is the meaning that rewards you so much more.

Nobody gives you that meaning, just yourself. You are the one who gives yourself.

RICH: Have you ever questions yourself along this journey and gotten a little bit lost and lost the meaning?

JACK: Sometime when I talk to bureaucrats and they kind of say no, I like why am I doing this? I'm trying to good and it's supposed to be his job and he says no all the time. But after a while I get used to it.

GETTING OVER A SHITTY MONTH

RICH: How do you get over a shitty, you know month and no, no, no no. You start questioning yourself. What do you do to reset and to get back on track?

JACK: I remind myself that I don't have much days to live so I'm 61. I budget myself to die at 80 exactly on my birthday. Of course not going to kill myself, I have to budget just like you budget your dollars every year for your company. I have thought right now about 6,800 days which is just less than 1,000 weeks and so this time is very precious. If I don't use this time and I go home to relax and watch television, then I'm not contributing while it's still possible.

So I think that is my biggest motivator because every day is one day less. So I want to use every day in the most meaningful way and toilets is one of them.

BEING ALL IN

RICH: Does that mean that you spend every waking moment working on these challenges or do you have 8 hours a day for toilets, 2 hours for meditation and health, 3 hours for family...like do you try and have a holistic life or are you really mission focus for your whole awake day?

JACK: Yeah, it's mission driven every day 7 days a week. I wake up until night time. Then in between I kind of steal a could hours to have a secret affair with my wife and to spend some time driving the kids and talking to them in the car and then going to the next appointment. It's not a sacrifice. I think you should show children how to be a good human being. You can't teach them, you can only show them.

THE NEXT 25 YEARS

RICH: Tell me, what is your vision for the next 25 years of sanitation? What do you hope will be accomplished?

JACK: In the next 20-25 years every single human being on earth will have a toilet that is clean, safe and the excrement is treated and doesn't pollute the river and the waterways. People would not be sick because of hygiene issues. I think people will talk about toilets in a very normal way just like we are talking about food and drinks.

RICH: Thank you very much for your time. It's been great.


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.


Gift Chantaranijakorn

Overcoming the Blind Spots of Entrepreneurship - Gift Chantaranijakorn, Ma:D Hub

In this episode of Entrepreneurs for Good, I speak with Gift Chantaranijakorn of Ma:D Hub in Bangkok.  It is an interview I recorded a few months back, and is coming a week after she announced that she will be closing the Ma:D Hub, and in part because of the blind spots that she had to overcome to build a community that could financially sustain itself.

IT is an interview that I believe all aspiring entrepreneurs who watch as she knew then that she had a big challenge, but at the time believed that she would be able to overcome it.

I wish she had, but more than that, I hope that others will watch this video and perhaps gain some insights that will help them recognize and overcome their own blind spots.


But all the blind spots might not actually be an issue.  Cause everyone can learn, develop, and improve.  The thing is the commitment.


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 Gift

Gift Preekamol Chantaranijakorn – the founder of the Ma:D, the co-working space in Bangkok, where future entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs can share their ideas, knowledge, passion and experience.

Follow Gift
Website: http://madeehub.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/giftpreekamolc


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
Snapchat: http://snapchat.com/add/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.


Jon Newton

Selling a Sustainable Value Proposition in China - Jon Newton, Life Solutions

One of the first thing that an entrepreneur needs to learn how to do is to sell. After that, learn to manage growth. Both of these topics, and a whole lot more are at the core of the conversation I recently had with my good friend (and disclaimer: client) Jon Newton, co-founder of Life Solutions China.

It is a conversation where we quickly move into the weeds to talk sales tactics, product development, and teams, and while Jon's primary region has been Mainland China for the last 15 years, the lessons of his conversation are universally true.. and IMPORTANT.

Hope you will enjoy the discussion, and if you do, please remember to like, share, and comment!


quote


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 Jon and Life Solutions

Jon Newton is the Managing Director and China Co-Founder of Life Solutions Filtration Systems which offers water filtration solutions and services in over 20 cities in China. He has been living in China for over 15 years and can be contacted on LinkedIn.

Life Solutions was founded in 2003 to provide customers with the very best, state of the art drinking water systems, aimed at improving health. We pride ourselves in providing a 5-star service to our clients in the sourcing, supply, installation and maintenance of our systems. We offer a variety of solutions tailored to suit any requirement related to water treatment, resulting in the purest form of fresh potable water.

Follow Jon
Website: http://lifesolutionschina.cn/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonnewton/


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
Snapchat: http://snapchat.com/add/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.


Lisa Genasci

Scaling Impact Through Collaboration and Partnerships - Lisa Genasci, ADM Capital Foundation

In this episode of Entrepreneurs For Good, I speak with Lisa Genasci about her journey building ADM Capital Foundation, an organization that has been widely recognized for its impact across a number of important issues and for their work supporting (and incubating) some of Hong Kong's leading organizations.

It is work that that required a commitment to her vision for change, remaining focused, and finding ways to collaborate with others to bring scale of effort and impact.


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 Lisa

Lisa established The ADM Capital Foundation ten years ago as an innovative philanthropic vehicle to support critical research and impact-driven approaches to promoting environmental conservation in Asia.

ADMCF has been widely recognised for its work on solutions to some of our most intransigent challenges: Our depleting oceans, the nexus between forestry and development, air quality and public health, the intersections between food, energy and water.

Lisa advises ADM Capital to shape its investment principles and provides ESG advisory services to ADM Capital funds. Lisa holds a BA degree with High Honors from Smith College and an LLM in Human Rights Law from HKU.

Follow Lisa and ADM Capital Foundation
Website:  http://admcf.org/
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/admcapitalfoundation/
LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-genasci-35ab7640/


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
Snapchat: http://snapchat.com/add/richbrubaker
Instagram: https://instagram.com/richbrubaker
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/richbrubaker

Contact Rich
[email protected]


Full Transcript

RICH: Welcome back everyone. Rich Brubaker here with Lisa Genasci from ADM Capital Foundation. We're here to talk about working between non-profits, finance to work on the biggest problems of, that I think the Asia region is facing. We hope you enjoy this, we hope you find value and inspiration from the discussion we just had. I know I certainly did. If you did, please remember to like, share and comment.

INTRODUCTION

LISA: My name is Lisa Genasci and I set up ADM Capital Foundation for the partners for ADM Capital, which is an investment manager based in Hong Kong 10 years ago. The partners, four British partners, wanted to not just be giving in terms of their own philanthropy, but they wanted to set up a foundation that be impact driving. So right from the beginning they wanted to see systemic change in the environmental sector particular.

Initially we had a strong children at risk program, that we've morphed into the space that we saw for ourselves was more in the environmental sector because there was less work happening and the environmental sector would oversee a lot of need for change.

EARLY AREAS OF PASSION

RICH: So what are the issues that you initially came in on, drove you personally or that were align with the partners?

LISA: We started an initiative on shark finning. Because 50% of the shark fin trade was through Hong Kong and people said that we need we can't make change in shark finning. People will continue to serve shark fin at wedding. We supported initially all of our work begins with research. We supported cultural trade and market research which showed actually that people were not necessarily wedded to the consumption of shark at weddings. It was more of a sort of a habit. It was a questions of showing faith of affluence, or showing affluence and that is not so difficult to the change once people understand the consequence of the consumption. So it became an issue of consumption and how to change behavior

Rich, you have INTRODUCTION here as the title....are you sure? It is also above.
RICH: So you did the research, you identify the consumption, then how did you take it forward and what impact...are you able to look back on it hey, we had this much impact or we did this much?

LISA: In that case, we supported the research, we brought together NGOs working in the sector. Obviously, everybody has their own strategy. It's not a matter of NGOs necessarily working in the same way. Everybody has their place, which is fantastic, but we all work to divide the message so this buy consequences of the consumption. That was a main message in Hong Kong, which is a bit different than the message in China. Which is much more around cruelty.

So with NGOs, we established targeted campaigns focused around hotels, which is where there was obviously a large consumption of shark fin, wedding banquets. The other focus was companies for the official banquets. Then of course government for government events and fast forward many years later we've ended up with about 150 companies signed up to WWF corporate pledge not to consume shark fin. Then in the terms of hotels, we most of the 4 and 5 star hotels, 62% of the 4 and 5 star hotels and actually it's more now have taken shark fin soup off their menu or serve it only upon request.

RICH: How long did it take, how long has this been going on? When did you do the research? How long has it taken for this 30% reduction?

LISA: I guess we started this year, I'd have to check the figures, but we started to see the reduction in 2012-2013 Id' say and we started in 2006.

IDENTIFYING PROGRAMS

RICH: You have a lot of it issues that you work with from forestry, fishery, obviously air pollution. How do you figure out what issues you're going to work with and why not just stick with one? How do you make those decisions as a group? How do you maintain a 10-12 year commitment, I'm sure of money and of human capital to each of these issues?

LISA: We have really programs across five areas now so at quality for conservation and finance, water in China, a seafood initiative and wild life trade. But in each of these areas really we've evolved slowly I would say. As one issue... has we've seen our pick, taken interest or action or results, then we've been able to move to develop that issue and go deeper into another aspect of it. We've set up teams around each of these areas. China water risk is a good example where they could take forward those issues for us.

Where we don't see NGOs already engaged, we've been willing to step in and create initiatives sort of ADMCF initiatives that can and take the issue in 1/2 and they have run with that issue. So it's not as though ADMCF is sort of going deep in each one of these areas. We've set up teams to go deep into each one of these areas.

RICH: But how, like how from the outset how do you actually pick the issue? How do you know if you're looking at 10 things that you should go forward this one? What is the criteria that you try and layer in so you can understand? Now's the time.

LISA: We have to deal with the timing and also a sense of the people working in that space. We're not in it to be competitive. We're in it to be collaborative to work with others and to really bring together others that we feel that is the moment. We have an opportunity to...we have an opportunity to go deeper into that particular issue.

SETTING UP SUCCESS

RICH: So when you look at these, what are some of the key..and you want to have that mindset. you want to have a life after your support, after your direct involvement ends. What are some of the things you do in the beginning to maybe set that up?

LISA: Make sure that the support for the initiative...well, first we start with research. Really have an understand of what the context is and how we're going to address it, establish the theory of change. So really understand how we are going to, what the impact is going to be what we ant to see, how we are going to address that via research and make sure that you have a broad base of collaborators. NGOs, companies, government whatever is the mix that's going to help make that change.

Then what is the funding source? It's not just us. Broaden that funding bucket. What is going to be the source of funding that is going to support that for a long time? Where it's appropriate we can step back. Once we feel that something is on it's own, we don't' need to be in that particular initiative. We can step back and let it take it's course.

BUSINESS MODEL

RICH: Speaking of funding, you are the founder of the foundation. They gave you the money to start the foundation. How is your funding changed over time? Is it a continued endowment that you can pull off of and you can only use a certain percentage or does the capital growing? Or have you actually developed a business model so that you are selling reports, your selling service, like how is that evolved over the last 10 years.

LISA: The partners absorb all of the core costs of the foundation and we direct cofunding into partner projects. So that has been our model every year and certainly a lot of funders have appreciated that because they feel that their money is supporting whatever the project is. But the reality is, that does ya know limit our own growth to a degree.

So we are thinking of about what are the alternative sources of funding. So the tropical landscape finance facility we've started, I hope in the future could potentially generate all sorts of revenue for the foundation. Then we have a couple of other sort of revenue driven initiatives that could provide a source of support to the foundation in the future. But all of our information and research is open source. We believe that it should be open source.

RICH: On the funding, if you think now or maybe things that you've tried in the past, what are the pools of funding that are the most aligned to you? Are those the ones you really need over time? Sometimes you need a lot of money and you have to make a change of tact and compromise so you can get that in. What are some of the considerations you have when you are going through that? You're creating a business model after years of not having..I mean you have to have the budget, but you don't have to have the business model. How do you make that work? What are some of the core things you have to have in place in order for there to be great partnership on that.

LISA: Well I have to say we have been very lucky in that we've had that course of source of support from the partners. We've also been very lucky in that we are...there aren't many other foundations in Hong Kong that provide in then sense the same service to other US foundations or local Chinese foundations who are interested in environmental issues who want to get involved, want to see impact. We can deliver on what, we can deliver on our programs. We can deliver on action in our programs.

So they've seen us as very useful so actually we've been able to set the agenda which has been really important for us. So we haven't diverged to meet funding, funding has come to us.

SOURCES OF FUNDING

RICH: What's the best kind of funding for you? Is it corporate? Is it foundation? Is it government? Each one has different strings. Each one you can..what's been one or the best one that you're more natural to?

LISA: Most of the funding, the cofounding, has been throughout the foundations. Actually either US or local foundations. The best collaborations for us have been those where there is obviously a similar mindset and it's been an understating, a very clear understanding, again impact and what we want to see. So being aligned with our funders in terms of what the results should be has been very important and we've been lucky.

KEYS TO A GREAT PARTNERSHIP

RICH: What are some of the key things that make for a great partnership or a great collaboration?

LISA: Being aligned in terms of I think the message what you want to see. Not always how you get there because everybody has different ways of working. But understanding where you want to get to and understanding what that sort of general messages is I think is extremely important.

SCALE

RICH: What are the issues that you want to take up next and how are you going to go about expanding on the organization when you are already talking about budget verses business model?

LISA: I think we've got enough issues.

RICH: I mean is it ok to say it's enough? Or we've had some conversations about you need to constantly scale. Probably the most abused term in our entire ecosystem. What does scale mean to you in that sense?

LISA: Exactly. I thought about that a lot. I've come to the conclusion of no need. We are happy and we can be impactful in the space we are working in now. I don't feel the need for us to be a huge foundation. I would like to build more resources to be able to do more in the work that we do.

LESSONS TO OTHERS

RICH: In an ideal world, every investment group here would have their own foundation that is in hose supported in the same way. If you were speaking to someone who is looking to create a similar model as yourself, what are some of the key things you would tell that individual when they are talking to the LPs or the banks how to create a bit of autonomous unit that does the exact same work?

LISA: So it's all about the people. Make sure you hire people who care about the issues who are really have the same sort of nsync with you in terms of what it is you want to achieve. Give them space to create and allow them to take risk. Because you can't make change in this sector without being able to take risk. I think a lot of foundations forget the need to take risk.

That is the beauty of philanthropy. We can see the initiatives. We can support research. We can take risk in ways perhaps private sectors can't and we can create change that can magnify by bringing along the private sector.

TAKING RISK

RICH: You said you could take risk that the private sector can't. That's kind of the opposite of what we are trained in this space. So what, can you give me an example?

LISA: Yes. For example, the tropical landscape finance facility that we've started. So we got a very generous grant from Convergys. Which is a Canadian government supported entity that supports innovative finance. The developed initiative finance to build a team that could help us develop tropical landscape finance facility, which as I said said is..to marry a development agenda with...to drive a development agenda with private sector capital.

It would be very hard to find a fund manager who would be able to put their own money and time into developing the type of projects that we are developing around tropical landscape finance facility. It think we'll be able to show these transactions are real and the transactions at scale. These transactions are at scale will achieve what we want them to achieve and that they will have financial returns. But we needed the space to be able to build that.

RICH: Right now you're not sure there will be a financial return. Let's assume there is.

LISA: No, there will be financial return. They're being structured as commercial, fully commercial transactions, but they are difficult and complex to build as you can imagine.

SCALABILITY OF PRODUCT

RICH: If you prove the model, what then do you think is the scalability of that same financial instrument? Because at the end of the day it's a financial instrument. Do you foresee that you could label this thing and maybe more foundations, more both management groups, more banks would get involved and buy this product and maybe drive your issue foreword? Is that a goal? Or do you want to just get this one project done and show that it can be done in the right way?

LISA: First transaction which is a 17 millions dollar transaction in Indonesia benefits from a 50% U.S.A. guarantee. So, it does allow the private sector a certain comfort. So we believe that maybe in the future other transactions wont need that sort of comfort. That private sector will be more comfortable with this type of transaction that has a very clear environmental and social agenda as well as the financial return.

RICH: It's really interesting actually. It also in that sense, you really are just drawing off the financial capacity...that structuring background of the group itself marrying it straight into the issues that are important to the foundation. But I have to be honest, I'm not sure where the line is between is the two groups.

LISA: Well, on this project there isn't one. What has been amazing is also to see BMP capital market team steping up right behind us. There are structuring partner. They are arranging the green bond that will be.. is the results of...the securitization of the loans. They are selling that product to private sector. It's been a fantastic partnership for us and hopefully there will be many others. We have quite a strong pipeline of products that will sort of be following behind.

RICH: Last question following up on that. You mention that you liked having that firewall between, but in this product it doesn't seem like it exists.

LISA: No, you're talking about core funds. That was how we were established. Our offices are here. ADMA Capital offices are elsewhere, but for this particular product there is no line. We are working to the same agenda.

RICH: If that one really scales out, would you say that actually that might be the next..like that's an ideal way to go forward. Where you can bring the two organizations so close together they are actually one product and scale out as long as you remain autonomics in a sense?

LISA: I think it will be product base. Like with this product, it works well. Then as I said the 16:24 fund has a very clear environmental and social agenda. At the same time they are still our core ADM product, which work to obviously ADM Capital's investment principals. But, this is a different type of product. It needed the grant funding in order to be able to lift it off the ground. It needed the very clear sort of ENS support initially. But hopefully future transactions so we will be...it will be easier and will be smoother I guess.

RICH: Last question. How do you keep yourself focused with so many big issues? How do you keep yourself inspired by looking at so many big issues that really are, I mean there is not a lot of happy news some days. How do you keep focused? how do you keep inspired?

LISA: I have an amazing team working across all sectors. It's not me, it's honestly the team. They are passionate. They take great ownership in each of the other areas in which they are working. None of us could do any of this work without that sort of determination to make change. I would say I am at heart an optimistic person. I really do, I can see the incremental change we've been able to make. Because of the partners ADM Capital has given us that long time horizon, I can see that we can make change over time. I remain optimistic.


Sompon Srakaew

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.


quote


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.


Pol Fabrega

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

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 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

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
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.


Abigail Smith

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

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 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

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
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: 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.