Rise of the Little Guy

It was a big week in the world. If you look closely, there were some serious indicators of the significance of the mounting impact of the “little guy” on the world economy, not least of which is on the food supply.

In Vancouver, the price of a bag of rice has risen more than 30 percent since the start of the year due to the pressure on supply from the developing world.

The price of fruits and vegetables? Here’s something exciting - prices are down over 20 percent here in Canada as the US dollar declines - could this mean a bright future for the small farmers in the U.S. in terms of exports?

Maybe this is another sign - Farmers markets… did you know they are the fastest growing segment of the food economy. The number of farmers markets has doubled twice in the last decade according to Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy. Kind of goes in line with the advice of environmentalists to eat local produce first.

Want another one? Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan. ….Saskatechewan? Something big is happening in Saskatchewan? Yep, Potash Corporation just yesterday surpassed the Royal Bank of Canada with the largest market cap in Canada - over $65B. The price of potash has increased nearly 5 times in the last year thanks to the increasing demand for fertilizers which have potash as a key ingredient. Growing all the food the world needs to feed itself is destined to keep driving growth in value for what might be a yawn for the rest of us city folk.

My point of all this is we are seeing some very clear signals of how the rapidly growing population of the earth and the current of globalization are starting to change everything. The demographics of our world today are like nothing the world has ever seen before. Al Gore raised the flag. Now the winds of change are starting to blow hard. I’m not sure we comprehend how quickly the change could accelerate.

I’m taking the signs to heart. What do you think is going to happen in the next 5 years. Add a comment. Love to hear what you all have to say.

I recently returned from a trip to Rwanda. It was a truly remarkable trip to a country that sits just south of the equator in the heart of Africa, at a time when the people of Rwanda are attempting to transform their economy. For most of us, we speak proudly of launching a successful start up. Imagine starting an industry or an economy. That is what individual Rwandan people are doing today.

There is too much to say in one blog post, so I thought one way to share at least some of my experience there is to provide a top 10 list of the things that most impressed me there:

10. Government - strong leadership, equal representation, clear programs for change
9. The food - traditional, great pizza, Chinese and some of the best Indian food I have had anywhere
8. The transportation - clear, smooth roads, well marked, calm orderly, respectful drivers
7. The climate - I thought it would be hot and humid. Actually, low 20’s C, misty and breezy each day
6. Security - Rarely felt safer anywhere. Forgot my bag in restaurant. Happily returned 2 hours later.
5. The coffee - Subtle, smooth, strong, best I have had. Rwanda is to coffee what Bourdeaux is to wine.
4. The healthcare - Great care for my chest cold. 30 open heart surgeries at hospital week before.
3. Internet access - Lots of Internet cafes, wifi in the hotels. Plenty of desire and ability to use it.
2. The countryside - Deepest green, rolling hills, misty valleys, frontier feeling.
1. The people - consistently kind, welcoming, trustworthy, attentive, sharp, strong sense of respect for self, family and community, ready to embrace the world.

And there are many, many more individual experiences I had that underpin these great 10 assets in the heart of Africa. If you have any desire to go to Africa, Rwanda is a great place to start. The combination of people, culture and climate, and the sense of security left me a bit embarassed about my anxiety about going, and wishing I had booked more time there. To the many new friends I made, I thank you and look forward to seeing you again soon.

Q: What do Christopher Paul Gardner, Ismael Beah, and Paul Potts have in common? A: All believed in themselves and triumphed over personal hardship to realize their full potential, happiness and success on a global scale.

Chris Gardner’s autobiography “The Pursuit of Happyness” was made into a major motion picture starring Will Smith. As anyone who has seen in the movie, it is very easy for any of us to fall out of grace in the developed world, and recovering can be as hard here as it is anywhere in the world. In fact, as I talk to people about Mr. Gardner’s story, I learn that many of us think we would have given up had we been in Mr. Gardner’s position. As a single father, he achieved the impossible of rising to greatness on one simple but critical notion - he believed in himself. He succeeded in overcoming homelessness, poverty and utter dispair to prove to the world that he is an exceptional human being with a unique gift in finance. Mr. Gardner now owns his own investment firm, and is a multi-millionaire. You can learn more about Mr. Gardner’s story by visiting.

Ismael Beah was a boy soldier in Sierra Leone. Beah lost everything in the turbulence of war - his family, friends, home and his childhood. Taken in by rebel soldiers, Beah was drugged by soldiers, trained to be a killing machine and unleashed on his fellow people. I won’t give away the greatness of his book and his life, except to say that he survived and returned from the edge of personal devistation. His book (a New York Times Bestseller) “Long Way Gone” <is one of the finest, purest and most honest accounts of life in the midst of war, and what it takes to survive.

Paul Potts, a participant on “Britain’s Got Talent” came as a shock to the judges. Before starting, Paul told the judges about his simple life and job at The Carphone Warehouse and later how he was bullied as a child. When he announced that he always wanted to sing opera, the crowd and the judges waited anxiously for what they expected to be a painful few minutes. Instead, Paul made Simon Cowell’s jaw drop and the crowd cheer and cry as he sang like few people in the world could ever do. He won the competition easily, and is now a rising star worldwide. You can see his appearances on the show by going to and searching for Paul Potts. His first appearance on the show has over 20 million views to date.

My point of writing about these three amazing people is to confirm, in a small way, that we are all capable of doing great things if only we believe in ourselves. The hardest of times can be broken. We all have it in us, as long as we know what our gift is. If anyone has any other examples of great things happening among us, please comment. I’d love to read more inspiring stories of life and the rise that’s waiting there in all of us.

Well, now I’m sure Rwanda is on the verge of doing something big. Last week I wrote about Rwanda Rising. This past weekend, I attended the 4th Rwanda convention in Bethesda Maryland, and I must say, I was totally impressed.

In my entire life, I have never met people as friendly, welcoming and optimistic as the Rwandan community I was with this weekend. And despite the devastation from the 1994 genocide, Rwanda has stood back up, putting an aggressive vision in place to reach by the year 2020. Everything I saw, everyone I spoke with this weekend tells me this little country, once on the verge of total destruction, is now on the verge of breaking through and giving us all something to believe in and respect. By making a knowledge economy and entrepreneurship major pillars of their vision, Rwandans are now stepping up to the challenge. From real estate development, to tourism to technology, Rwanda is committing to delivering on its economic and community promises.

I wish my Rwandan friends the very best. I will do whatever I can to help making your vision a reality.

Like most people, I only learned about the genocide in Rwanda when it was too late. There are few places and few people in the world who have passed through such rapid, massive harm and devastation. When I think about the extent to which this tiny country was taken down, I ask myself and others, how could Rwanda possibly recover?

I recently read an article from Business 2.0, about Rwanda. I must say it left me impressed and hopeful in many ways. As it turns out, Rwanda is in a re-birth. This small country, the most densely populated in Africa, is attracting venture capital in some important economic sectors. I spoke to Rob Fogler, one of the venture capitalists featured in the article. He told me how amazed he has been at the quality and optimism of the Rwandan people and the tireless commitment and flexibility of the business community. Rob’s VC firm Thousand Hills Venture Fund, is investing in Rwanda. Rocket 2020, one of their investments, is a chain of Kinko’s-like stores that offer Internet connections, and other services targeted at Rwanda’s small businesses.

Rob also told me how very secure he feels each time he visits Rwanda, which I must say was a bit surprising for me. I wanted to know more. Then, waiting for a friend one day, I ducked into a newsstand. As I was looking for something good to read, I came across a recent edition of Foreign Policy magazine, and in it, I saw Rwanda with the best rating for “security aparatus” among a large number of states facing challenges.

I am excited to think about the possibilities for this once devastated country. As I reflected on what Rob said, and thought about the security rating, I began to realize the sheer energy and commitment it takes just to get to where Rwanda is today. Could Rwanda show the world what it means to truly believe in yourself, to take control of the future and make it happen? I think so. Under the right conditions of cooperation and investment, Rwanda could make a come back worth watching. I will be attending the Fourth Rwanda Convention in Washington D.C. this coming weekend. I’ll share my experience in an upcoming posting. If anyone has any recent experiences in Rwanda, please comment on this post so we can all learn more.

Thanks Rob for the enlightening conversation that stimulated this posting.

Here in North America, children everywhere are starting back to school over the next week or so. We take it for granted here that children go to school, and begin their journey of growth to great awareness, opportunity and fulfillment.

With education so much the norm here, it’s liberating strength and equalizing force in the world go mostly unnoticed in the day-to-day lives of hundreds of millions of people in the developed world. Sure, education is a social priority. But how much press does it really get, how much credit does it appreciably get for critically empowering all that it touches. Not enough when you think about it. Amazing. The smallest, weakest, physically challenged among us can be brought to greatness through education. Wow. Could education be bigger than the Internet?

As I thought about it today, I was struck by the similarly amazing equalizing force both education and the Internet have. They hold the potential of giving everyone, everywhere fair access to the same opportunities globally, and the same state of awareness and independence regardless of where each of us starts.

Stephen Lewis in his recent book “Race Against Time” provides a powerful record of the challenges that many children face globally. For the orphaned children of AIDS in Africa, when asked if there was one thing they could have, what would it be? The resounding response is to go to school. Reliable information, a sense of belonging, and the possibility of breaking free to something better are all embodied in education.

It’s exciting to think that this is exactly where the Internet is driving toward today. With the social networks of Web 2.0, we finally get the “sense of belonging” that was missing in Web 1.0 when the world was really all about how many more 1,000’s of unrelated websites would be put out there today for people to bump into. Some people would surely argue with “reliable information” or perhaps the possibility of breaking free as products of social networks. But then again, we are still early in this wave of change and we have only just started to see the diversity of ways that this latest form of the Internet will take.

Could BrainPop be the convergence of these two great platforms for growth and fulfillment? Could the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative be the device to trigger it all? When my mother gets excited about what a little green laptop could do for the world…all I can say is, something big is coming.

The classic saying goes “Think Global. Act Local.” Built into these words is the very positive notion that somehow all of us can take action to affect big things. But it strikes me as somewhat limiting as well - that it’s ok to think big, but at the end of the day, our scope of action is to be local.

It’s funny. Until recently, we mocked people trying to make a difference by saying “ok, sure, but let’s not solve world hunger” as if it had no solution and it were bigger than any combined effort could overcome.

Jeffrey Sachs, perhaps the most effective economist in history at creating dramatic change toward the end of poverty, suggests that global poverty is solvable and in his book “The End of Poverty” lays out a perfectly doable plan.

With the rise of online social networks and mass collaboration, I really believe we are on the edge of an incredible wave of possibility. We see an explosion of “little people” rising through Web 2.0 through their participation in online social networks and causes. www.takingitglobal.org, and www.kiva.org are two great examples.

The big difference that we see in these platforms is that they drive organization, align power and focus resources on solving local problems on a global scale. In essence this is what the new world is all about - “Think local. Act global.” (Izumi Aizu).

We do have a chance. We do have a say. And we can act locally for global impact.

As I stood, going up the escalator thick with people from the subway, I looked around me. What I saw was quite simply amazing - people. People from all over the world, rising the escalator together. The amazing thing was that there was no pre-dominant race or background among us. We were all rising the escalator together on the same beautiful hot sunny day.

And then I realized, like most of the world, over half the people around me likely work in small businesses. Dry-cleaners, restauranteurs, penny store clerks, news-stand owners, tailors, tech entrepreneurs, artists, musicians, care-givers. For me, it was perhaps a picture-perfect capsule of what the world could be: a diversity of cultures, no one dominant, no one threatening, no one scared, “small” as individuals, “massive” in our potential collective strength, all rising together.

I smiled at the possibility of what could be, if some way, everyone had a chance to rise, a part of that great diversity. If only there were a force strong enough, fair enough in its footing, to give everyone around the world enough of a chance to realize their full potential and in the end be happy, one beside the other without fear, uncertainty, torment and abuse along the way.

Things are indeed changing. The Internet is the great leveler, the great platform for people to rise together. The time is coming for everyone to get a fair opportunity to fulfill themselves, without constraint, diversion or pain.

My hope is that this blog, Riseofthelittleguy.com, will be a place where we can all go, to share our vision of possibility, celebrate the success of people, the smallest in individual power yet the most massive in collective energy, in their quest to realize their full potential.

I look forward to sharing what I see, know and feel, in my life and I am excited as I look forward to connecting with others, hearing, joining and reacting to the rise of the little guy.