Our Going Global webinar, and Slideshare presentation, will help you understand why going global is something for you, and how you can join us in changing the world!

Your business idea may be large enough that you will need a business loan or small enough that you will need your own craftiness to make it work. The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has ample guidance and information on loans as well as anything else you may need. Here are some steps you can take to start taking action on your idea:

Educate yourself

Now that you know what type of business you want to run, it is time to become an expert in that field. Make sure you get any licenses or education that may be required, do a competitive analysis on other businesses that offer the same product or service as you hope to. Examine why they do well or why they don’t.  Determine how to make your prices competitive and how you’ll differentiate yourself from the competition.

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Lay the ground work

What will you need to get started?
 

• A business name – You will need to come up with a business name and make sure that no businesses in the your state have that name.
• Choose what type of organization you want – The most common types of organizations to choose from are sole proprietorship, partnership, corporation, and S corporation. Limited Liability Company (LLC) is a new structure that can be formed depending on the state you are in.
• Brand Yourself – You will need to start with a logo and then move onto your business cards and any other marketing materials you need initially. There are many ways to produce cost effective marketing for your company. You can even use email marketing and a template based website that you maintain yourself to help cut costs.
• Find a location – Do you need a location outside of your home? You may be able to save money by working from home if an outside office is not necessary.
• Get a business loan if needed – There are venture capitalists and banks out there that are willing to loan you money. If you need funding, see what options are the best fit for you.
• Set up accounting – Make sure to set up your tax forms and accounting services in the beginning so you can make sure to keep track of what your business is making and spending. There are many ways to do this through the right invoicing software or by going to a paid accountant.

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​Get started selling yourself

You may need to create a portfolio to build credibility in your new business. If that is the case, then networking and volunteering your services are key ways to get your name out there. There are many networking organizations that you can join to help you build your business. Approaching family and friends and asking them if they need your services, even if it is volunteer work, will help build your portfolio to show what you are capable of doing.

If you don’t need a portfolio for your type of business, then make sure you are ready to jump right into working for your customers.

Don’t give up

All businesses that succeed are hard work and take time and energy to grow into a prosperous business. While the startup will be a challenge, if you hang in there, you will see the fruits of your labor.

Are you ready to take the risk and realize your business dreams? What other steps have you taken if you’re already pursuing your dreams?

What if I told you that in 2012 you could have your dream job? Your job would include making money, building brilliant new approaches to products and services, endless learning opportunities, unlimited growth potential, and the end of poverty. Would you look at me like I was losing my marbles?

My guess is you would. So rather than tell you that you can have your dream job, I will show you that there is a path to getting there. I will do this in the same way that communities in rural Africa show us how they create their own economies. How innovation in their lives becomes the engine of hope and opportunity that is all-too-uncommon these days.

Welcome to ThinkImpact‘s innovation process.

In 2011, a young man from Richmond, CA named Philip Johnson applied for an opportunity to live and work in rural Kenya with ThinkImpact. The program he was hoping to join was called the Innovation Institute.

Philip first arrived to Washington DC for ThinkImpact’s training program called ThinkImpact University with no stamps in his newly minted passport. He had never even spent so much as a night camping. The palm fields of Kaloleni, Kenya are nothing like the streets of Richmond where he was born and raised. What he did have was a fresh degree from the University of the Pacific and an entrepreneurial spirit that would drive him to have a truly life changing experience in Africa.

Philip had no job lined up after graduation, but had a voracious appetite for learning and enterprise. He joined 10 other young people — college students, grad school candidates and young professionals — on this 8-week journey in Kaloleni.

For Philip, the trip was not easy at first. He was shaken by the new environment, the homestay experience, the food and the culture. Miles outside of his comfort zone, he began by putting his guard up, but he was determined to overcome the challenge. At the same time, he felt frustrated by the innovation process and challenged by the seeming lack of energy and motivation in the community.

Three weeks into the program, there was a pivot. Something clicked. As if a sudden awakening or moment of enlightenment had struck him, Philip learned how to communicate with people from this rural village. He began to comprehend what he could do in his short time in the community. Having completed his studies at UOP’s Eberhardt School of Business, he was more than capable of identifying market trends and supply chains, but he wasn’t able to fully understand how a social enterprise could be leveraged to bring about an end to poverty in a very localized context until he connected with the local community members.

Philip opened up his heart and mind to people in Kenya. He listened to their aspirations, their challenges and ultimately became an inspiring figure to them. Along with several other community members, a Design Team formed and before long, with some brainstorming activities a growing sense of what was possible and a design challenge was developed. They asked: “How might we create healthy products, using local resources, while employing the youth?”

Their answer: coconut honey.

Through the innovation process Philip and his team prototyped multiple batches of this delicious honey that was made from the local alcohol, Palm Wine, a kind of fermented coconut water. Most families in the community earn a living through some part of the Palm Wine production and distribution process. Philip and his team found a way to leverage local resources and processes to create a new product that can be sold on the local market. A much healthier — and less intoxicating! — product than palm wine.

The Innovation Institute develops economies with new thinking, and it exemplifies what is possible. ThinkImpact has forged this process through five years of learning and listening in rural communities in Africa and also taking notes from visionaries. We work with IDEO.org and IDEO’s human centered design materials. For those interested in learning how to become part of an innovative process, check out IDEO. For those looking to work in rural Africa during college or after, apply for the Innovation Institute and become the process.

Change your life and change the world.

In Philip’s own words:

Why did you want to go?
“I was interested in social entrepreneurship. Already had been thinking about water problem in developing countries and my roommate showed him the opportunity to apply for ThinkImpact. Sounds pretty cool. Poverty alleviation, sanitation, sounded like what we were interested in. Always better to teach a man to fish than give him a fish.”

What was it like there?
“… it was… it was almost, like, being in tropical paradise, but everything that you think that shouldn’t be on that tropical paradise was there. Dropping trash, animals everywhere. It was humbling. A constant learning experience. A constant reflection experience. It was all those things. It was kind of like a rainbow and everything is there and it makes one complete picture.”

Will you go back?
Yes. I’m actually working on that now. Trying to build out a business plan. Going to be calling all of them. I’m really trying to get back.

What connected you to the community?
Went in with this idea that I should be a listener. That I would be tested. I wasn’t going to let my guard down. But then I did. And I watched. You can listen, but I also watched. I think it was when I learned how to watch — their sounds, watching them do stuff. By me not having talked to him that much, simple nods that I was paying attention, I think that was how we communicated the most. We would talk and it would be a period of like 40 minutes, silence, but it wasn’t an awkward silence.

What is your goal now?
My goal now is to get Ndoto Enterprise off the ground. The palm wine is a staple income in the community. With this you can actually create another revenue source. It’s also renewable. The coconut tree is everything to the community. We want to improve quality of life. This product incentivizes men not to drink the palm wine and instead to sell the sweet coconut syrup that comes from it.

Follow Saul Garlick on Twitter: www.twitter.com/saulgarlick

Jianlin Presents at SOCAP

The panel at SOCAP went extremely well, thanks to the concerted efforts of the panel team. People who attended the panel actively participated in the activities that we designed. I’m glad that all the efforts we put in during the preparation paid off. It was interesting to watch our audience doing what we did for the idea generation phase, but during a much shorter period of only 10 min. They all did pretty well though because most of the ideas they came up with were exactly what many of us scholars decided to do in the end.

After a long but interesting keynote talk I went on to present at the Innovation Showcase. It was eye-opening to see what other social entrepreneurs have been doing. The showcase makes me realize that social entrepreneurship is a really exciting area not only because of the projected profitability but also its potential impact. It was heartening to see many devoted social entrepreneurs whose businesses have benefited thousands of people. This encourages me to explore even more in this area, where “Money” meets “Meaning”.

What problem are you addressing? Why should people care?

The world needs to experience a “mind-shift.” That is, the wealthiest countries and individuals must seek solutions to poverty that reach well beyond traditional philanthropy. Indeed, the only way to actually end poverty is to create opportunities that create yet more opportunities. These opportunities can be found in the markets of developing societies, but they cannot be ideas hatched in the comfort of a library or an apartment. The ideas that will create jobs, meet basic needs and provide for a better quality of life must be sourced directly from the communities that would benefit from such innovation.

With this belief, ThinkImpact (www.thinkimpact.org), the social enterprise that I run, seeks to provide college students and young professionals living and studying in the United States extraordinary access to economies and communities in rural villages in the developing world. While there, they are not asked to complete service projects or conduct research for a paper. Rather, they are expected to fully immerse in the culture, experience life as a local through shared austerity, learn about the vast local resources, skills and other assets that exist within the society, and work in design teams with local community members to unleash the power of those assets.

The curriculum and program that we offer (this year for 44 scholars from 27 schools across the United States) is non-traditional in every sense. It is challenging, uplifting, empowering and at times, stressful. But it is also the most efficient way to change minds from dependence to independence; breaking the endless cycle of poverty once and for all. It is time that community members gain access to ideas and processes that will help them unlock their own potential, creating myriad opportunities in a given locality. Until we break the dependence on aid that is so common in poor communities, we can never imagine an end to poverty.

What an incredible summer! Last week half of the students on our Innovation Institute returned from the program. They had just completed the full-immersion program in rural South Africa where they completed a curriculum that integrated asset based community development, design thinking and social entrepreneurship. Their achievements were breathtaking.

New businesses got off the ground, relationships built and ideas tested. From water solutions to new restaurants and chicken businesses, the scholars who participated during the summer of 2011 left a very positive mark in the communities in Huntington and Mabarhule.

It is hard to capture the meaning of having so many talented people both in the communities and scholars on the program come together to build social enterprises. In some ways I marks a turning point for everyone involved. It is the moment that entrepreneurial solutions become the key to solving age-old problems in health, education and poverty.

As Eric Duffy, a South Africa scholar put it, “I think we all came up with some great ideas this summer and I’m particularly determined and eager to pursue the business Jianlin and I helped develop as far as it will go… I was pretty psyched when I first discovered the program on your website a bit under a year ago and now that I’m back stateside my enthusiasm remains undiminished. Thanks for developing the opportunity and making it available.”

Warmly,

Saul Garlick

I came into this summer thinking that it would be this great summer of introspection and that I’d have this near-spiritual experience that would have a pretty major effect on who I am as a person.  I planned to read a lot of books (I brought 12), do a lot of private journaling, take tons of cool pictures, attempt to learn how to sketch/draw, etc.  The last one flat out hasn’t happened, although I did try a bit early on.  Lesson learned – you can’t go from being a horrible artist to being a decent-to-good artist simply by flying to Africa and living in sparse conditions where you think about a lot of things.  You need to have some ability that allows for the transfer of thoughts to the page.  I don’t.  Such is life.

I do read, although not as much as I envisioned.  Thus far, I’ve completed IV by Chuck Klosterman, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho, and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.  All have been enjoyable, though I’d have to say that my favorite has been The Alchemist.  I wonder if Paolo Coelho just sits around all day and tries to come up with really deep, insightful quotes on life.  Between The Alchemist and his Twitter feed, dude’s got a ton of good material.  On my reading list for the rest of the summer are The Blue Sweater by Jacqueline Novogratz, The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier, and The Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam.  If I make it to Breaks, I’ll be pretty pleased with the amount of reading I got done this summer.

What has surprised me is the amount of time I spend with folks in the community – going in, I knew that I’d be dealing with community members throughout my stay, but I assumed that it would mostly be in a business capacity and with a translator.  I wasn’t sure how I’d connect with people with whom I can’t really communicate on my own.  Two major things that I overlooked: one, a lot of people know English.  My host family “Dad,” Safari (yes, that’s actually his name.  Swag.) is pretty much fluent.  It’s really a testament to the extent and duration of the West’s political power.  I mean, we’re talking several fluent English speakers in rural freaking Africa.  The second thing that I underestimated was the power of non-verbal communication, especially when it comes to kids.  Initially, I didn’t know a lick of Swahili or Giriama (the dialect spoken in our village) but I did have a beach ball.  And, if you have a beach ball, you’ve got friends.  It’s pretty universal.  The kids in our homestay (Thoya, Baracka, Gunga, and Ana) stayed away for the first week, but now I’m swarmed by them whenever I step out of the house.  Well, except for Ana, who is 2 years old, super-cute, and only comes near me when I offer candy (that she grabs from my hand and then turns around and runs away).  She has started to wave and smile at me from a safe distance though.  Baby steps.  Anyway, I’m rambling, but I hope that’s a little insight as to how we maintain some type of level-headedness when struggling to solve these big problems.  Also, we’re going on a safari next week.  Should be amazing.  Hope all’s well back home.”

On the other hand the Yogurt team is all ready with “Birani Change your Life Yogurt Enterprise” and ready to kick off the market. The first batch of 10 liters Yogurt was able to make a positive impact in the market and share 300 KSH of profit in the box office. Due to high demand of yogurt in the market, my team is continuously working neck to neck to supply 20 liters of yogurt starting from next week. They are super excited and thrilled with the new challenge. GO TEAM!!!!”

My host father, Rafi, a fantastic chef who has been looking for a job since Sam and I moved in, was finally offered a position at a restaurant in Nairobi.  Sam and I were extremely happy for him when he announced this good news on Wednesday.  But during breakfast two days later our excitement turned to shock and sadness, when he announced he was leaving later that day.  Although we both realize what a great opportunity his new job is, we were stunned and unprepared to say goodbye.  I wanted to thank him for an infinite number of things, but at that moment, with only fifteen minutes and no plans or preparation as to how to convey my gratitude, I didn’t feel like I expressed half of what I wanted to.

Rafi was truly a great host, always making sure we were comfortable and had everything we needed.  Saying goodbye, not knowing if or when I will see him again, crushed my day.  And this was only the first of many goodbyes coming in the next seven days.  As I reflect on my time spent with the community before leaving this week, I think the goodbyes will only get harder.”