Be Empactful

Welcome to Season 3 of the Be Empactful Podcast.

Season 1 was about the 4 KYC Framework and how you can build a strong business strategy by knowing intimately about your company, customer, competitor, and community.

Season 2 we spoke about #sustainability and #resilience and how any business can become a sustainable business it starts at the top with thought and desire to make a difference.

If you haven’t heard that yet, it's available here: https://open.spotify.com/show/23gTc97OC9Kn4dhMDrIkKf

In between the seasons, things have been crazy good. During the past few months, we are working on our independent assignments and together doing “Marketing Strategy” workshops with our clients, some things that we decided two years ago or pre-pandemic.

According to Merriam Webster Dictionary, the definition of Culture & Influence as follows:

Culture - is the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; also the characteristic features of everyday existence (such as diversions or a way of life) shared by people in a place or time.

Influence - is the power or capacity of causing an effect in indirect or intangible ways.

Influence has a great impact on culture and vice versa as per the culture, we figure out the formal & informal power dynamics.

In this Season we discuss: How People, Institutions & Situations influence Thoughts, Outcomes & Decisions.

The culture of an organization is impacted by the Decision Makers that influence the perception among the people it is impacting and a lot of times the community forces organizations to take actions that are good for business as well as society.

This is one point of view. And there is many such nitty-gritty to it.

Let's dive into this season to unfold a lot of these nuances.

We also have a surprise: one of the senior professionals from a well-known MarTech company would be coming and sharing their thoughts from an individual capacity as well as the organization's perspective.

So join us on this journey of Being Empactful - Creating Impacts with Empathy!! Share with us your journey or thoughts and ideas on how businesses can be truly sustainable.

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See with your Heart, Listen with your Mind. Spread your wings far and wide.

Welcome to the Season 2 finale of the Be Empactful Podcast.

Season 2 has been an interesting season for us where we were discussing #sustainability.

3 Ps of Sustainability - People, Profits and Planet - or Economic growth, Ecological development and Environmental friendly and the role Communities play in sustainable business development.

The other side of sustainability in business - Resilience or the ability to bounce back in the dynamic and even turbulent marketplace.

While we received feedback that we are talking about everything under the sun and not giving a checklist or actionable points for any business to implement it right away. Also, the skepticism around the fact that why is there a need for a coach & a mentor.

A coach & a mentor is someone who has been through a similar journey bounced back from the challenges and are there to help an entrepreneur navigate the journey. Similarly, there is no checklist on sustainability for a company to implement but guidelines that start, as a thought, vision & mission which transform into actionable insights acting as a North Star leading to the creation of a checklist.

Our guests this season Sreela from My Urjiva & Pukhraj from Moi Namaste are an example of the same. Venky & Aparna spoke about Goal Setting & Bouncing Back whereas Paras spoke about integrating #community into the Business Strategy for growth.

All in All it's been fun.

Now as the Host Bees take a rest to refresh, rejuvenate & prepare for Season 3. We would request the listeners to reach out to us with their thoughts for a cup of coffee or tea or a beverage and who knows where these conversations would lead to.

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See with your Heart, Listen with your Mind. Spread your wings far and wide

Welcome to Season 2 of the Be Empactful Podcast.

Today’s episode is dealing with the Marketing journey of a company.

Like any other journey we take, there is the preparation we need to do before we start the journey. And once the journey has begun, we have milestones in our journey which we need to know how far we have come and where to go next.

Most startups and small & medium businesses focus on sales and how to get revenue. They question the need for marketing, often saying that marketing does not get them customers and revenue – it is Sales that do so. The issue here is that companies often try to measure Marketing with Sales measures – something akin to measuring the number of oranges plucked with a liter measure can.

The preparation for marketing does not begin once a product or service is ready to go to market. It begins when the idea is birthed – to be validated against market needs. Market validation is required in various ways through every stage of product development till the launch.

The launch is when the marketing journey begins. And with any journey, we need to know the following:

- Where do you want to go – the target market

- Why do we want to go there – the outcome we want

- By when do we want to reach and how much are we willing to spend – the budget and timelines

- How do we want to get there – the brand messages and channels to choose

The Where and Why are key to developing the specific measures of success for the marketing program.

The marketing program then goes through a journey of 5 key milestones – marked by the vowels of the English alphabet – A, E, I, O, U:

- Awareness

- Education

- Interest

- Opportunity

- Ubiquity

More details on these in the podcast…

I welcome our listeners to share their thoughts on the need for a focussed marketing program for their business and how they are planning and executing for the same.

Connect with me on:

https://facebook.com/vsskumar

https://instagram.com/valadisk

https://linkedin.com/in/shivakumarvs

Reach out to us if you want to discuss, just share a thought or even a cup of coffee

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See with your Heart, Listen with your Mind. Spread your wings far and wide

Season 2 of Be Empactful podcast was supposed to be completed on 26-Oct-21 with the release of the 10th episode.

But Host Bee Shiva is missing in action and the finale episode will be released on 2-Nov-21.

When we started this podcast series the idea was to debunk the myth about Strategy both Marketing & Community.

The purpose is to enable the decision-makers to invest in Strategy first & then Execution to scale.

The myth about Community Strategy is associated with social enterprise and here we are discussing incorporating it as a Business Strategy for long-term growth.

In Season 1, we covered the fundamentals of Marketing & Community strategy. We received feedback that it is too bookish or theoretical.

In Season 2, we focused on #sustainability & #resilience and interviewed a few founders who put people & the planet first which led them to build profitable businesses and create impact.

One of the major feedback received from Vineet’s prospective client on the consulting proposal is that it's too expensive whereas from the first State of Indian Community Management 2021 report the pricing is well within the range of what a professional with relevant experience would charge.

Two important factors to be noted:

During the 3-4 days of deep work in the last week, I have ideated the service that anyone who wants to talk about Community, Community Strategy & Community Building could pick my brain for an hour for a small consulting fee.

This helps in lowering the adoption barrier with minimal commitment and gets prospects to get and stay invested for the long term.

Here’s the TIP:

Create a product or service for your enterprise which has a low adoption barrier and gets prospects invested.

Lets us know your thoughts and share them with us.

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See with your Heart, Listen with your Mind. Spread your wings far and wide

This episode is about the journey of Moi Namaste – a People and Planet first company that is focussed on bringing Ethical homeware and apparel made by Indian artisans to the world. The journey straddles all three parts of the sustainability pie with supporting and developing Indian artisans – ecological development; ethical products which are environmentally friendly, and finally build a business for their economic benefit.

Pukhraj Ranjan, Founder of Moi Namaste, relates her own journey from being a Teach for India fellow to moving to Finland for further education and work and then being inspired by her love for Indian arts and culture to build Moi Namaste – a sustainability start-up that has one foot firmly planted in Finland while the other travels all over India picking and choosing ethically made Indian arts and products to bring to the world.

Moi Namaste started ecological development by initially supporting 2 women's self-help groups to now sourcing and helping Indian artisan groups across India sourcing a variety of products to take to the world.

The Moi Namaste journey also speaks about important lessons learned which include:

- If you have an idea, just start, in whatever way.

- When you start a passion project, they become something that takes over your life.

- If not now, then when – the time is always right.

A key component is to ensure that they remain sustainable from source to consumer – selecting groups that fully follow fair trade practices to source the product, and often rejecting those who do not, even if there is a price advantage. They also promote the message to consumers to only buy products that they actually need and not because they see a product they like.

3 key takeaways from the Moi Namaste for the listeners are:

- If not now, then when – if you have an idea, start small, test the idea and then go for it.

- Sustainability is a process, not just a destination.

-  Find your purpose.

To know more about Moi Namaste and our guest Pukhraj Ranjan, check out

https://www.moinamaste.com and http://linkedin.com/in/pukhraj-ranjan

Welcome to Season 2 of the Be Empactful Podcast.

This is Episode 8 where we have a guest who believes in Community Building so much that he started evangelizing it in the Indian Ecosystem and in turn created an opportunity for other community professionals and it is gaining momentum as a movement to help businesses realize the value-added by incorporating community in their business strategy.

Paras Pundir, Founder of Community Folks, the first community of Indian Community Builders & a community consulting firm. Within half a decade he has mentored & built more than 30+ brands & Individual Communities also having led community chapters for brands like Facebook, Trello, LinkedIn Local, etc for the Bangalore region.

Paras has been a TEDx speaker and CMX Community Professional of the Year 2020 & during his stint as a Program Manager at Microsoft Reactor, Bangalore he has built a community of 6k+ developers and counting ground up.

Paras is also Head of Content & Community at LikeMinds and the first State of Indian Community Management report 2021 was launched recently delving into details of a community becoming a critical factor for businesses to consider for long-term success.

3 key takeaways that Paras has for listeners based on his own journey:

For our listeners who want to connect with Paras Pundir and Community Folks, check out https://communityfolks.com/ or follow @thecommunityguy and @desiwisdombaba on Instagram

So, let us know how the insights from SOICM report 2021 is inspiring you on your own journey. Reach out to us if you want to discuss, just share a thought or even a cup of coffee

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See with your Heart, Listen with your Mind. Spread your wings far and wide

Welcome to Season 2 of the Be Empactful Podcast.

Today in Episode 7, we are going to talk about some of the feedback that we received from our listeners, who:

Vineet and I discuss how sustainability is not a secret mantra or a secret formula that you apply to a business and voila.. you are sustainable

Greenwashing is fast catching up with companies who are trying to quickly jump on the sustainability bandwagon and paint themselves green in the eyes of authorities and customers. It is not as simple as just repackaging your product  - now with a green label and saying you are green. It requires a transparent label around your company where the world can see that are actually green at your core.

Customers today are demanding sustainable practices from the companies and companies, in turn, are forcing customers to become sustainable. Customers are willing to pay a premium for sustainable products and sustainable packaging. And companies are reciprocating in kind.

Blue Bottle Coffee and Starbucks - both leading Coffee chains are asking their customers to get or purchase reusable coffee cups. A small grocery shop in South India is asking people to get their own containers for food grains and other food items...

Companies from various sectors are becoming sustainable and setting well-defined sustainable goals. We have covered examples like

The more we explore the more we hear about companies defining and focusing on sustainable development goals. We have also found that there is no fixed formula or checklist, each industry and company make one guided by its vision and strategy

What's important is to understand that when you are making a shift or change, there are bound to be challenges and issues. Companies should not give up due to failure and instead focus on what they analyze did right and analyse what went wrong. Companies can gain a lot of support by communicating and educating their ecosystem on their sustainability principles and goals.

So here's 3 guideline for listeners wanting to go sustainable - whichever industry you are in:

1. Create a vision to build a sustainable business and let that guide and drive you in defining your sustainability development goals and strategies

2. The path to Sustainability will have its own challenges. Do not give up, celebrate what victories you have and reach out for help and collaboration to get back on track

3. Ensure your complete supply chain from source to consumption is sustainable - vendors, employees, stakeholders, delivery and distribution partners, production process, and consumers - the complete business ecosystem.

We ask our listeners to go through these guidelines and start working on their own checklists for their industry or specific company - share it with us so that we can share it out with the rest of the community. Reach out to us if you want to discuss, just share a thought or even a cup of coffee.

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See with your Heart, Listen with your Mind. Spread your wings Far and Wide

Welcome to Season 2 of the Be Empactful Podcast.

This is Episode 6 where we have a guest who believes that economic resilience and environmental sustainability are just 2 facets of a company’s success today and should not be treated separately.

Sreela Pillai Roy is a Financial risk advisory turned Co-Founder of Urvija, a Sustainable Personal Care Products company, while also helping in her family's agri based business. She is passionate about the environment and especially against using chemicals in her products which either contribute to deforestation or harm the community or environment.

Sreela shares her journey of a video of how deforestation of forests for Palm Oil was killing the orangutan species, motivating her to start up a company which led to Urvija, India’s 1st “No Palm Oil” certified Personal care products company - a key milestone for the company and Sreela herself.

Sreela speaks about how they researched and identified locally available native ingredients that can be used in personal care products instead of Palm Oil, thus contributing to the sustenance of the environment and natural habitats of various species. This also helped in growing local market sources and communities which has improved the local ecology - a truly circular and sustainable model that looks at economy, ecology, and environment.

A simple wish she carries is that if this podcast and outreach can save 1 orangutan or preserve 1 habitat, we have started our journey back. It is this credibility & sincerity towards the cause which has resulted in Urvija getting certified by the Orangutan Alliance in Australia

3 key takeaways that Sreela has for listeners based on her own journey:

For our listeners who want to connect with Sreela Pillai Roy and Urvija, check out https://www.myurvija.com/ or follow @spillayroy and @myurvija on Instagram

So, let us know how the Urvija journey is inspiring you and what motivates you on your own journey. Reach out to us if you want to discuss, just share a thought or even a cup of coffee

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See with your Heart, Listen with your Mind. Spread your wings far and wide

Welcome to Season 2 of the Be Empactful Podcast.

This is Episode 5 of this season where we are exploring how to build Sustainable Businesses. Today we have Venkatesh (Venky) Iyer, Founder, and Principal Mentor, Zeal N Zest Mentoring and Training Services, sharing his thoughts on how Goal Management is critical to building resilient businesses.

Venky shares his thoughts on how he helps business leaders build sustainability in companies - the ability to sustain market upheavals & uncertainty.

Companies today continuously face multiple challenges. It is important at these times to not just go with the flow but set, plan and track goals that drive your business to success.

The process of Goal Management starts with:

1. Set clear goals for yourself and your business. These need to be clear and practical goals.

2. Write down these goals and where you can review them periodically. Writing goals down is important, whatever the size of the organization.

3. Share these goals with people who will support and collaborate with you to stay on track and achieve the goals.

Goals need to be challenging or even improbable, while still being realistic and grounded. Achieving challenging goals requires the right timelines which should be long enough to achieve while being short enough to keep you motivated through the journey. It is also important to understand the sacrifices that you are willing to make during this journey and the areas were not willing to compromise.

Venky summarises his thoughts with the 3 tips for our listeners on Goals management:

1. Goals that are set needs to be linked to Vision, Mission. They need to be purpose-driven and realistic. Goals should be objective & specific with clarity of thought.

2. Goals should be set with a realistic timeline and continuously monitored.

3. When market conditions lead to low business, take the time to prepare for when the markets open up again

For our listeners who want to connect with Venkatesh Iyer, check out https://www.zealnzest.in or connect on http://linkedin.com/in/venkatesh-iyer-66641730

So, let us know how you are setting, planning, and tracking your goals to build your business. Reach out to us if you want to discuss, just share a thought or even a cup of coffee

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See with your Heart, Listen with your Mind. Spread your wings far and wide

Welcome to Season 2 of the Be Empactful Podcast.

This is Episode 4 of this season where we are exploring how to build Sustainable Businesses.

Business leaders have always focussed on how customers are the ‘reason for being’ for any company.

Companies and Businesses often focus on providing the best customer service to keep them satisfied. This is more reactive to customer actions and looks to satisfy the customer after they have been expressed.

With the advent of more digital tools and technology in business, the focus is now shifted to predicting customer requirements and building deep customer relationships - based on past actions and activity.

With the ubiquity and omnichannel coming into purview, we are now moving into delivering Customer Experiences, every touchpoint - offline, online, digital, or physical. The upcoming need is now to shape customer requirements - influence them into looking beyond their current buying patterns.

From personal experiences at a favorite restaurant to the Holiday Inn Group, we share examples of businesses that understand customer patterns and provide services before the customer asks for them.

Businesses like Decathalon, a sporting goods chain, and Apple are taking this forward to provide a unique experience to every client who interacts with them - ensuring that the customer has all the information they need to make a decision and are comfortable asking for more.

The customer today is part of a larger community, which is adding to the overall buying experience and in turn the customer satisfaction - resulting in better business for the company. Native Place and Hubspot are examples of companies that have used the community to understand, shape, influence, and deliver what the customer needs - making them very sustainable in the long run.

To sum up, Companies need to move from Customer Service, where they react to customer needs, to Building strong Customer Relationships, where they predict customer needs to finally deliver fantastic Customer Experiences, where they influence Customer Needs - finally delivering Customer Satisfaction - the secret sauce to retaining them and building a sustainable business.

If you are still looking to jump onto the bandwagon of Customer Experiences - here are 3 statistics that a satisfied and retained customer can deliver to your company’s bottom line:

So, let us know how you are engaging and retaining your customers to build your business. Reach out to us if you want to discuss, just share a thought or even a cup of coffee.

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See with your Heart, Listen with your Mind. Spread your wings far and wide...