2-3-4 Friday: Choose the little guy

‘Seeking to spark the most potential within you per word of any online newsletter’

1 thought

Where do you go to buy a service you need for your company? Let's say you need an IT vendor. Or you need a design agency. Or a social media company. Where do you go? 

This week, I was in Jakarta and I spent some time with two young people, Aktsa Efendy, and David, trying to scale a business called Sarana.

Amongst the many things I learnt from them, was this interesting story of dogged persistence. One of their services is helping companies to find use cases where AI can make a difference. Think of how AI already helps you today to create graphics, better emails, piece together different information, and reduce the time you spend on menial things.

Part of their work was talking to businesses. For one F&B owner, they looked at his social media pages and realised that he was going down one day to one of the cafes to do a visit. They didn’t know what time it was.

Except that he was going to be there.

For the rest of the day, they camped at the cafe, constantly on the lookout for him, and eventually managed to pitch to him their service.

There are other times where they have approached receptionists at the bottom of a swanky office tower, asking for meetings with the head of the company.

They have been dogged.

And actually, if you look hard enough, you would see many examples of dogged business owners and their team trying to make a living.

Wherever you are, you have a choice whether you want to create more of the same, or to support the small business owner who’s trying to do something different. My encouragement to you?

Support the small guy.

Because whilst it’s true that their services may not be as polished as the established player in their field, they make up for it by seizing every chance that’s given to them with both hands.

They will probably give you more time and attention, and they will do more with the little that you give them.

Sure, there are many bad actors out there, but if you start from a place of assuming the best of these people, you might be surprised at what you find.

1 talk

The big business doesn’t need your money.

The small business does. Every dollar you spend with them makes a marginally bigger impact in their impact on society, and in keeping the competition on their toes.

So the question we should ask is: what’s wrong with the little guy?

1 tip

I was once selling ice cream in a mall, trying to do my very best to get sales for a pop-up store we had.

People came and went, and we managed to sell $280 of ice-cream over 3 days of standing there, and approaching everyone I had with free samples of ice cream.

There were many times when I was ignored, turned away, and times where people showed deep disdain for what I was doing.

But that taught me a very important lesson. 

I could not force people to ’support local’, or to support small brands. But what I could do was to paint a better picture of what life looked like for them, so that people could be more aware.

Look around, and you would quickly see.

See the restaurant or the store that has no one inside? Imagine what it’s like for the stall owner, who faithfully prepares the food everyday. Or goes to work at the stall, not knowing how long more the stall will support.

Sure, their business acumen may not be as pronounced.

But even if they were here today, and gone tomorrow, your role in giving them a few dollars, may have given them a bit more hope that what they did was not entirely useless.

And no, we are not just being sentimental about the power of small business.  We are not saying you should support them if they are bad. But what I'm saying is that big businesses today can continue with their excesses like 

1. forcing you to wait on the phone for 30 minutes just to speak to a customer care office 
2. getting you to queue for another 23 minutes just so that you can check out at the store 
3. not replying to any of your messages... 

Because they think we've no better options. 

And we've no better options, because we might have unwittingly caused it. 

By constantly choosing the bigger over the smaller. The cheaper over the better service. 

Our society are the sum of the consistent choices we make - and if we keep choosing bigger, better, faster, cheaper, then we only have ourselves to blame if big companies, continue to use their monopolies to bully us, and their staff, into short-term decisions. 

As Thomas FRIEDBERGER, Deputy CEO of Tikehau Capital once said, we've chosen a society that prides efficiency over resilience. But if we choose consciously to support small, local, businesses, with the hope that they would contribute to a longer-term economy, life could turn out better. 

Need help solving a business problem with technology? Talk to Sarana (this brings up an email link and no, I don’t get a commission. I just think they are great people.)

John

Live Young, Live Well - Work Your Love