Behind every small business there is a story.

i am a small business owner

i run a think thing for sustainable

development

but i’m also a business advisor the kind

of person that asks you many questions

about

how you run your business and then tells

you how to do it better

i know it sounds very annoying and it is

but that was before the pandemic like

many of my fellow entrepreneurs

overnight i lost my clients certainty

and the ideas on what to do next i could

no longer do meetings over coffee

the networking events got cancelled the

travel i booked

was out of the question

usually i would have many to-do lists on

my

table but there were no more pendings

i know that some people were still

having video calls to replace the

interaction and continue business as

usual

but every conversation seemed to be lost

in the black hole of talking about the

pandemic

so after a couple of those i just

decided to take a break

i turned off my phone and all the pop-up

notifications

suddenly i got time much so

that i started wondering what is the

meaning of life

what am i doing here and what am i doing

with my life

what got me back was a phrase i heard

on an interview during the financial

times online conference

the head of one of the key financial

institutions

got a question about support towards

small business

to which she replied surely they

made savings during the good times but

did they

it’s tough to run a business it is

especially tough to do it on your own

the interesting report stated that 67

percent of small firms

were severely hit by the pandemic

another report by the oecd

showed that 40 of households at the

beginning of the crisis

but three months away from poverty we

knew the daunting numbers and yet

we did not know what was really

happening there’s so much diversity in

what small businesses do

and how they organize their work that it

makes it very difficult

for governments to support them and

during the pandemic it became especially

visible

but more importantly without networking

events

and any opportunities to mingle to

exchange

thoughts and ideas we entrepreneurs

lost touch with each other

we were not aware of what others did

thought

or experienced so i realized

that i have to use the time i got to do

something to help them

i started asking entrepreneurs i knew

how they dealt with a lockdown

and what they did to keep their business

going

and not in private conversations but in

recorded

remote interviews so that many others

can get inspired learn from it

and get ideas on how to save their

business

i must say it was nice to be busy again

but very fast it got a little too busy

with 12 hour working days and doing

everything on my own like a one woman

orchestra

and the most difficult part was after i

published the 30 video stories

i had to decide what to do next how to

promote and grow it

in this new reality how to manage the

workload

and how to finance it i continued

working on the initiative

while my brain was fixated on the idea

on the old idea that to do

anything in this world you need funding

many well-vision advisors told me what i

need to do differently or better to get

it financed

now that sounds familiar doesn’t it

i heard everything from improving my

camera quality

to charging the businesses we were

trying to help to even

registering a new legal entity

actually this whole experience made me

seriously reconsider my own choice of

occupation

now anyway at some point i got 108 tasks

on my list

but nothing was given the results it was

supposed to

it was only distracting me from the one

task

that mattered the most giving voice to

small business

so i stopped and i asked myself

if something happens for the first time

can anybody really be an expert on it

could it be that the things we knew

about how to run the business

grow it funded are no longer relevant

in the post lockdown world

i looked around to see what could i do

in this new circumstances

with a noble goal i think tank

fully online operations and no funding

and it turned out quite a lot

instead of looking for money i went to

education and research for support

together with universities in latin

america and europe we started doing

joint courses

based on the stories from small

businesses

we even involved those students into

helping the small businesses

now another inspiration that i had was

for many more entrepreneurs

to get access to these ideas in their

own

native languages

but i could not do that alone and where

do you find

help if you don’t have the budget you

don’t have the sponsors

well i thought the best would be to find

people who actually want to help

of course that’s easier said than done

luckily as a think tank we qualified to

register on the united nations

platform to find volunteers and we did

when our first volunteer a local student

from yucatan mexico was hosting his very

first

interview i stayed up till 2 am to just

watch it live

i didn’t understand a word because i

don’t speak spanish

but it felt really special to hear the

name of our initiative

introducing another language on the

other side of the planet

and since then we’ve been hearing it in

italian

german hungarian indonesian tagalog

hindi

chinese and even some african dialects

did you know that we as small businesses

represent half of the productive

population of earth

think of your favorite bakery or cafe

a grocery store on the corner a

hairdresser

a carpenter a yoga teacher

behind every small business there is a

story

a personal story of following your

dreams of continuing your family

profession

of moving to a new country and starting

from scratch

of being let go of the job and still

trying to make it on your own

since june 2020 over 150 entrepreneurs

from 26 countries have courageously

shared their stories

they told us how the lockdown and the

covet 19 pandemic

affected their lives their businesses

and their future

to date this story has reached over 25

000 people

and helped many of them to find ideas on

how to save their business

and a very special award for our team

was when the united nations

recognized our initiative and the work

we are doing

as an acceleration action toward the

sustainable development goals for its

contribution to

sdg 8 inclusive economic growth

sdg 9 social innovation

sdg4 better education sdg

5 gender equality and sdg 17

global partnerships

small businesses deserve to be heard

they are resourceful brave and

optimistic

even in the face of great adversity many

of them

lost their clients their income

but disregarding their own hardships

they took responsibility for the one who

depended on them

think of a one-woman sustainable fashion

business

that brings handmade clothing from india

to europe

during the lockdown she was not able to

receive or sell their products

and yet she matured to pay those

artisans in india because they depended

on her

and her small venture or

boutique consultancy in thailand which

instead of pushing sales

helped its clients pro bono to join

efforts and come up with the united

covered response plan

or a restaurant owner in mexico who

continued paying the salaries to his

employees

even when the restaurant had to be

closed and he did not get any support

because he knew that for them and their

families that was the only source of

income

all those stories hold so many lessons

ideas and inspiration without any

advisors or help

small business owners try test and

they’ll find their way

because they don’t need to figure out

how the new normal works

instead they’re inventing it and making

it work

all they need is to exchange ideas

remotely

with other entrepreneurs across business

sectors and geographies

and that is why we decided despite

all our challenges and thanks to our

volunteers

to continue this initiative in 2021

what we as a society have gained in this

pandemic

is time and freedom from the past

conditioning

i hope with my story i was able to show

that if the old system doesn’t work for

you

it doesn’t work against you either

so let’s follow the example of small

businesses and instead of figuring out

how the new normal works

invent it and make it work

let’s build a better more equal diverse

and sustainable world

together with the ones who believe in it