Transcripts
1. Activist Entrepreneur Intro: Hello, my name is mojo and I am going to be teaching the activist entrepreneur because I was the owner of the heat amnesia Hawaii eco community, which was an activist entrepreneur community located in the rain forests of Hawaii. Unfortunately, our community was taken away by the volcano in May 2018. By the Kilauea volcano eruption. We learned a bunch of lessons in our community which have allowed us to create learning materials and educational resources on how others can take their ideals and turn them into a business. And that's what we hope to show you to do in the activist entrepreneur e cos. In the course, you'll be going through various module how to identify your passions, how to turn them into a viable product and service. How to achieve funding, attract workers, and basically go through the practical steps of creating an activist entrepreneur business. So in the first lesson, for instance, you'll be learning to pick your passions and how to think about creating products and services based on those passions, based on the cause is you believe in making the world a better place. I've had 14 years working at the Heaney Ziya Hawaii Community. And so we learned a lot of lessons in that time was a wonderful way to be an activist entrepreneur, to run and ITO tourist and eco feminist community in Paradise. And we hope to be able to bring some of those lessons to you. Thank you very much. Aloha.
2. 1. Pick your Passion: Aloha and welcome to the activist entrepreneur E. Course. This is the first lesson in a multi part course, which at the end we hope you would have learned the basis and have tools on how to start and run your own activist entrepreneur business. First, we'll start by just giving you a quick intro in tow. What activist entrepreneur means what the term means Now an activist entrepreneur is someone who creates a product or service that addresses political, social or environmental issues in some way, shape or form. So the idea is that you have a business that in somehow it makes a profit. But it also has a bigger purpose now. What is the basis on how to create such a product of service? Identifying your passions down a passion is something that you feel strongly about in the world. It could be the status of women in the world. It could be about refugees. It could be about saving the gorillas in Africa. It's something some cause or causes that are bigger than yourself. In other words, it can't just be about you. You can have a passion that's related to you, such as if you have it eating this order, for instance, and you want to create a product or service that helps people with eating disorders. That might be an idea of something that's personal, that you're now making political. But that's the big idea is that we want to try to cultivate that aspect off. Thinking of things in the world that you feel strongly about now, sad to say, for many people, it's It's sometimes hard for them to think about things beyond themselves. We live in a very politically correct world where people can talk about themselves and their lives and their family and their this and their jobs. But to get passionate about other things can sometimes be a little, um, risky treading into politically incorrect waters. If you feel strongly about a particular issue as an activist entrepreneur, that is not your concern. We want you to think passionately about something because if you truly feel that heartfelt passion about an issue that will be the fuel that you will use to psychologically keep you motivated to keep going forward toe, bring that passion into a reality. So on the slide that we show here, you'll see that we have a number of different ideas. The key for you and one of the projects that we would outline is to identify things that you feel passionate about. Now you can pick a whole bunch of things. They could be really broad, like improving human rights and China. It could be really, really specific, like working with, um, a batted woman shelter in your local city or town. So it could be any range of things. But basically, it's gonna be something that gets you Oh, wrong side gets you right here on, gets you in the heart and makes you feel makes you feel about it. Something that you know. If you were working on this on making this better, it would make you feel better. That would make the world a little better. So this is less than what? Identify your passions and there will go on to lesson to and start working on ideas and how to implement them. Thank you very much.
3. 2. Create an Activist Product or Service: hello and welcome to lessen too. You've already picked your passion, the subject and cause that you believe in or causes that you believe in. Now how do you turn that passion? That idea, those beliefs that you have for making the world a better place. How do you turn that into a product or service? So the way we suggest to do that on one of the most practical ways to do that is simply too learn about your subject. So let's say your cause is environmentalism will say, saving the bonobo monkeys in Africa. Now, what you be doing is researching about it. You'd be learning about it. You be Googling about the bonobos you'd keep you, maybe perhaps even take a trip to Africa to volunteer of one of the sanctuaries, learning and learning and learning and getting into the power off depth of knowledge. Because when you have an in depth knowledge, something interesting will happen eventually. The idea of a product or service that addresses that corns, which you have well, just bubble up into your head. The more you learn about the subject, the greater the chance that eventually an idea will just come into your head where you will think, Ah, by creating this product or service, I can address the cause, which I feel passionately about. Sometimes that process can take years. You could be learning about it reading, working. It may seem in the beginning as though, like, no, I can't really think of an idea. It's not coming. All that means is more research is needed on the beauty about today is that we do have a world where there are so many avenues to learn more about a subject you're passionate about . And that is a really amazing the fact that we could just google something right away, that we can get all kinds of online magazines and literature that allows us to access more information. The fact that we can volunteer work in the course. All of that allows us to gain more information and eventually, like a lightning bolt, an idea will come into your head where you think if I do this this or this, I can solve or in some way mitigate the problem I'm passionate about. And so that is your challenge for this chapter to stop researching and learning about your cause. Thank you very much.
4. 3. Practicality: So now you've created your activist entrepreneur business. Or at least you have the idea of what you want to create. One really good step at this point is to put it through what we call a stress test. And a stress test is basically a set of questions that you can ask of yourself and of your idea to see whether it's viable to continue on or whether you need to go back to the drawing board in some ways. So for instance, there's one test which is called the swat analysis. And that is to examine your idea based on S, the strengths, the weaknesses, the opportunities, and the threats. There's also a pest analysis that you can ask of your business to see whether it's viable. We created our own test, of course, The idea of being an activist entrepreneur. There are questions that you can ask of your entrepreneur idea. Put your idea through the PEST process to see viability Proceed or go back to the drawing board. So some of these questions would be, number one, purpose. Does your product or service involve Purpose Purpose: a solution and an idea that works towards addressing an issue, Is your purpose environmental or social? Number two, planet. Does your idea addressed the planet or environmental issues in some way? Or have you incorporated efficiency, environmentally friendly policies and practices and procedures into the way that you're bringing your service or product to the market. Number three is of cross profit. Your idea should have some sort of viable business plan so that it can make money. Custom make money is to be able to keep it going sustainably, gives you an income which allows you to keep working on the business. And before is people. Does your company or your idea incorporate practices and policies that benefit the workers, give them fair working trades? Or is it a business that is designed to benefit people in general, whether it's a human rights oriented business or something for social reform in some way. Number five, and the last one might seem like a little bit of a strange one. But number five is pleasure. Your business and your idea. It's great to be able to want to save the world. But sometimes if it feels like a never-ending sacrifice to do so, that's not really sustainable. If you're able to have pleasuring cooperated into the way you do business, into the product and service, into the way you incorporate your time off, the way you structure your business to allow for the ability to pursuit pleasure and play. That allows you to stay happy and your happiness will translate into being better in your business. In other words, it makes you and your business more sustainable. So these are the five principles that we would say for being an activist entrepreneur. But as we said, that there are many other ways that you can do a stress test to see if your idea is feasible. Lot out. Thank you very much.
5. Hedonisia Hawaii Case History: service. We want to use one of our businesses as a case history. The Hidden Asia Hawaii ICO community is an activist entrepreneur business. It was created with three different social environmental issues in mind. I'm very passionate about environmentalism. I'm very passionate about gender equality, and I also see the benefits to society of community living in my travels around the world. I was learning more about those subjects, and that was my kind of research phase. I was reading about it. I love subscribing to magazines. I would often read articles about these issues, and I kept learning and learning. And as I was going around the world, that kept learning. Then I got the opportunity to go to Hawaii, where I was able to then put my ideas into practice by creating a genuine community that was based on activist entrepreneurship. So environmentalism, something I was passionate about. The way we deal with environmentalism at Indonesia, Hawaii is through ICO tourism. We offer a much very different style of tourist accommodations than a traditional hotel, which is much more polluting and resource intensive. Our rustic ICO huts, what totally charming and people really, really loved them, agricultural tourism. It was another way to offer and in tow work on the environment in a way that allowed tourists to come to our land. We had a policy where part of their fee was what we called an agricultural fee that would allow them to harvest any of the tropical produce that was growing on the property. And we always had avocados and different kinds of spinach. We had about 30 different plants, but Nona's pineapples that anyone could harvest this part of their stay in the community. We also had many, many environmental practices and using ICO friendly shut soaps and showers. So we were able to offer a tourist experience that was much more environmentally friendly than staying in a five star hotel. So the third aspect is with gender equality. As I was traveling around the world, I noticed again and again and again in many different countries a consistent theme that women do not have the same rights and equalities and freedoms that men are allowed in most countries. So I wanted to do something about it, but I wanted to do something from an entrepreneurial point of view. So, at the heat, amnesia Hawaii community. One of the things we did was set up, and we call it the Jungle Queen Program, where a prissy princess could arrive at the community like usually a city female, very sort of soft and scared of the bugs in the nature of the wild pigs. And then we would train her, you know, give her a machete, give tools, teach some practical skills at, but basically give her that inspiration on foundation, sort of transform into a jungle queen, not losing her femininity, not giving up on it, but learning to feel that confidence from navigating nature without having Teoh need a man . And over the years we had many, many women who went through our program and who talked about how it transformed them, how it changed, little aspects off, how they dealt and how they conducted themselves in the world. We also managed a number of ICO feminist websites that dealt with gender equality, but from a more global perspective in the fields of reproductive rights, natural birth control, ICO feminist entrepreneurship. So, in other words, he amnesia. Hawaii was a business. It was making a profit. But it was also an activist entrepreneur, community we made money by addressing social issues. And what was very interesting, we found, was that many times people would book vacations with us to stay at our community based on the values we had based on the things they saw on the website. They're like, Wow, I could learn to be a jungle queen literally. I would have women sometimes calling on the phone to book and crying on the phone because they felt so disempowered. But they really wanted to be a jungle queen. They wanted to be strong and they wanted to come and stay at Heat neige Hawaii. And so it was really we got toe, see how our ideas were working in real time with people coming to our place. So we were able to test out and prove and measure that the ideas and beliefs that we had were actually playing out in real life and actually having an effect on people is but as well as the environment, you know, we took a basically a junk yard in Hawaii that we had to remove 18 vehicles from the property. We turned that into an ICO tourist community, so we were able to take our passion and I was able to take my passions and transform them into products and services that not only made a profit, but actually made a difference is well, so there you have the heat. Need a Hawaii case. History. Thank you very much, Love.
6. Politics and Protest: As an activist entrepreneur, you're an entrepreneur, you're trying to create a business, but there's something different. Unlike a normal entrepreneur whose focus is money, your focus or other things AS other social goals or people goals or environmental goals that you're addressing in your business when you're trying to save the world and make money, it's a little bit more difficult. However, there are also some major advantages that you receive as an activist entrepreneur that you don't get from normal business, you get to play a part in the political process. As a business owner, you're making your, your business. Once you start to make a profit, you want to keep it going around for a long time. And if you are trying to make a social change, business is often a great conduit to connect to politics, to lobbying, to joining associations, to basically pushing whatever the agenda is that you wanna do. We do have a case example in case histories of where this is being done already. The problem is it's big oil, big pharma. These are the corporations and the business types who are able to affect lobbying and just simply deduct it as part of the cost of doing business. Now you don't have to be a big cooperation to make that kind of political impact. We in, in Hawaii, the hidden Asia Hawaii Community, we were very active in the local political scene to lobby for legislation to protect Sustainable Community Living and alternative housing, to build the buildings that are different than the normal standard houses that you're allowed to have according to the building codes. And we had a grad degree of success with that, even as a small community out there in the middle of the Pacific. So one can be a tiny business or a bigger business. But once you have a social or environmental goal as part of your business, you can play a role in the political process to make change that you want. And another advantage of doing that is by making that kind of change. You're connecting with other politicians, you're connecting with people. Our process of working for sustainable communities put us in contact with all kinds of local politicians and leaders in Hawaii who, people who we would have never met had we not become politically active. And that helped us in other areas. We began to see, even on the small level, just how much business and politics work together. So rather than having big pharma and big oil run the show, we could have big green companies run the show, or women's companies running the show. I'm being part of the lobbying process. It's a much more sustainable way to affect social change. So the political advantage of being an activist entrepreneur, there are many more advantages in there, but that is definitely a very prominent one.
7. Class Assignment: Activist Entrepreneur Idea: So this concludes Lesson one. In this lesson, we hope that you've learned to pick your passions toe identifies is to identify the causes on beliefs you have about the world about society, about the environment, human relations, all of the things that you believe in to make the world a better place. And then we show you how to do research to start coming up with tentative ideas on how to create products and services that could theoretically address some of the problems raised in the causes you believe in as well as making income. So your assignment for the end of this lesson is to list your passions list the things that make you angry or that make you happy about the world. What would you like to see in the world to make it better? And then number two is to stop the research process to start coming up with products and services that could address the problems raised in, you know, with those passions. Now, of course, it's gonna be a little bit of a challenge coming up with things, and in the beginning you may have crazy ideas, and that's totally fine thinking out of the box is something very important for an activist entrepreneur going with the flow, going with she people, the normal people, that's then you might as well get a job. That's what normal people do. As an activist entrepreneur, you're trying to change the world. So sometimes outlandishly crazy business ideas can be, then homed down and evolved into something that is viable. So don't worry about creating a thinking of any crazy idea, no matter how where it is. The key for this lesson is to identify your passions and then come up with a few tentative ideas for products and services. That is your assignment for today.
Mojo Mustapha, Activist Entrepreneur
