Mr Yunus (Micro-lending) and Easter Egg hunt in the garden.

Hi, I hope you are enjoying the lovely weather at the moment.

On the 12 hour flight back from Singapore, I read an absolute gem of a book by Muhammad Yunus, the founder of micro-lending. You might have heard of his organisation, the Grameen Bank, which lends small amounts of money to the rural poor, especially women. These are people who normally who normally wouldn’t be able to borrow money. Fascinating is how it all came about. Since poor people could not borrow from banks, they resorted to lenders who often charged exhorbitant interest rates, some as high as 10% a week (!). As a result, people never got out of debt and became virtual slaves to the lenders. Often the amounts were ridiculously small in our terms … but to the poor in Bangladesh it seems insurmountable. To give you an example, he tells the story of how he bought out 42 people from this vicious cycle for just $27!! Can you imagine that? We wouldn’t miss the money but 42 people had to work every day just to keep up with the repayments.

His latest book, ‘Building a Social Business’ is inspirational. He describes the concept of starting a business which helps people that normally don’t get helped. Unlike a Non-Profit organisation, which does not make a profit and usually needs to be subsidised, the Social Business stands on its own 2 feet by making money but ploughs profits back into the business to reduce costs to the people you are helping even further. So everyone inside gets paid, but the ‘profits’ are never realised as there are no shareholders or shareholders agree not to seek dividends.

For example, he joint ventured with Danone the French yoghurt maker, to offer a special vitamin laden yoghurt at 1/3rd the price of normal yoghurts to target the parents of the poor, so their children, suffering from malnutrition, would get the vitamins they so badly needed. The concept is brilliant and this way everyone gains. The people get something they normally would not be able to afford and Danone get to do good without it taking away from other parts of their business. In addition, employees of Danone feel good about working for a company that is doing good in the world.

Another example is his JV with Veolia, the water company, who approached him about setting up a water company that offered water at 1/10th of price so that they wouldn’t have to drink infected water. Again, it is important to understand that the company doesn’t lose business, it isn’t subsidised, it isn’t a charity etc. but the company actually makes money so it can set up other such ventures in other parts of the world … and the problem of access to clean water is solved.

Brilliant. It really got me thinking about what products we could offer for next to nothing, without losing money, to make a huge social impact. I promise you that if you read the book it will get you thinking too. Watch this space.

Latest Update on ‘The Tour’

After the Millionaire Mind in Amsterdam, Germany and Rimini, the next stage is Barcelona and London. So we are half-way through the tour. This is Harv and me going for it on stage.

But over the Easter break I flew over to Singapore and Malaysia for a few previews there to introduce our trading concepts to the region. It was tough. The Singaporeans just sat there and weren’t very responsive at all, so I had to pull out all the stops to get them to be inter-active. I felt it was a tough gig. What was interesting was that the first time I wasn’t prepared for it psychologically and I could feel my own energy wavering and coming down. I let it get to me, rather than me get to them with more enthusiasm. So sales were not that good.

Then I thought about it - I had to take full responsibility. It wasn’t a tough gig at all. They were just being themselves. It was up to me to dig deeper, change my approach and be a better communicator. For the next presentation I was ready and didn’t allow myself to be infected. Rather I decided to ‘affect’ them and the results were much, much better.

Where in your life do you feel that your results are due to someone else – could it be that it has very little to do with them and more to do with you?

Melania and Marcus go Easter Egg Hunting

Melania went on her first easter egg hunt yesterday, and she loved it. I had hidden 6 plastic Easter eggs all over the garden in the – very - tall grass (gardening is not one of my hobbies). It reminded me how much I loved discovering easter eggs that were hidden by my parents, especially if other children were involved and it was a competition to see who could find the most.

Well I can tell you, Melania just loved finding all these eggs but as Mudrika pointed out, we should have put some chocolates inside of them, as maybe that was the whole point. Speaking of ‘whole point’, someone please remind me what Easter bunnies and Easter eggs have to do with Easter? I can’t remember at all! Anyway, Melania found all 6 in all and as a treat, we gave her a bit of chocolate … well maybe a little more than just a ’bit’ of chocolate (see above).

Until next time

Marcus