Want to help somebody - shut up and #listen - ermesto sirolli

a summary of the key points i heard from this talk on the subject of aid (but possibly the ideas can be applied to other fields) 

 - if people do not wish to be helped leave them alone 

- 1st principle of aid - respect - so never initiate anything - never motivate anybody 

- instead you become a servant of the local passion - of local people who have a dream to become a better person 

- so you shut up - you never arrive in a community with any ideas - you sit with the local people and become friends and find out what that person wants to do 

- find the passion they have - then help them to go find the knowledge 

- offer confidentiality and privacy - but not in community meetings - entrepreneurs never come to community meetings - so you don't know the smartest people in the community thru community meetings 

- so work 1 on 1 - but to do so you need to create a social infrastructure that doesn't exist 

- you have to become a new profession - the family doctor of enterprise/business - who helps you find the resources to transform your passion into a way of making a living 

- remember - planning is the kiss of death to entrepreneurship 

- the secrets to work with entrepreneurs - you need to offer confidentiality, privacy, absolute dedicated passionate service to them 

- then tell them the truth about entrepreneurship - the biggest or smallest company needs to be capable of doing 3 things beautifully - 1) the product you want to sell has to be fantastic, 2) your marketing has to be fantastic and 3) you have to have tremendous financial management 

 - so .... can you make it, can you sell it, can you look after the money

- and there has never being one human who can do all those 3 things 

- none of the most successful companies were started by 1 person 

- so have facilitators and networks that can help people find others good at the things they are not that cover the other 3 key points