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