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What's Business For?

All it starts from what we must do in this world. Do we have to be selfish and only try to do something for ourselves? How about helping others? Is that necessary?

The history of the world shows many facts that when a nation helps each other and serve each other they prosper but when they greed and boast with their wealth the nation declines and causes contention. And then revenge and pointless competition leads to destruction.

Many people have seen in their own life when they help more to others their business and life gets exciting and never ends the joy and happiness. But one who seeks only his need and ignore others never gets out from miserable life.

So, rich or poor, we are to “do what we can” when others are in need.

Jesus taught the people serving others mean serving your God. So, he did not point people do many meaningless rituals and offering animals and stuff to God, but instructed people to serve and help the others.

There are many companies have failed and hurt people’s investment. Bigger the economy grows more people are investing in business and stock market. Wealth become main goal of many people and nation today.

Be should, as charitable organizations do, measure success in terms of outcomes for others as well as for ourselves. Business cannot always afford to be so generous to so many people, but doing good does not necessarily rule out making a reasonable profit. You can, for example, make money by serving the poor as well as the rich.

Social entrepreneurs are amazing people and they are the ones making a change in the world to make it better. Many social entrepreneurs help poor people to grow and become self-reliant.

Muhammad Yunus, honorary doctorate of BYU, shared amazing story of his life. He said “I faced the conflict between my mind set and the reality around me when I was teaching economics at Chittagong university in Bangladesh in the early seventies soon my enthusiasm for the elegant theories I was teaching started wearing off although I enjoyed teaching my students all the brilliant solutions to economic problems I felt absolutely incapable of dealing with the massive poverty and hunger that existed in the villages around the campus I soon realized that there was a great distance between the real life of the poor and the hungry people and the make believe world of economic theory.”

He started Grameen bank with 27$ USD. Basically. He saw the poor people had no chance to get a loan from bank and prosper their home-based businesses. The banks were holding a policy of credit history and collateral. All his teachings were not applied to the people in poverty. He talked to the bank on behalf of poor people to get them a loan. It did not work. So, he talked to 42 people and asked them how much loan they need. They needed $27 all together. He gave them a loan from his pocket and waited. The result was amazing, all paid the loan back. And they were happy most importantly.

He tried to the bank convince and the micro loan works but they refused again and again. So, he decided to start his own bank to give a loan to poor people.

Today that bank, Grameen bank, lends money to 2.3 million poor borrowers in 39000 villages of Bangladesh and 94 percent of our borrowers are women. To date more than 2.4 billion dollars were given out as loans over the years. The repayment rate is more than 97 percent. Last year alone we lent out nearly 400 million.

The basic concept of this business idea was not for money. It was helping the poor people. And the blessing came on this brilliant business idea.

Our mindset is everything. It teaches that whatever you can imagine and it is possible. Just like people thought they can fly to moon and land on it. And they did.

But there are very few people think the poverty can be eliminated. There are some great people like Muhammad Yunus believe in destroying poverty. We need more people who has a same mindset.

Once we have the mindset, we can change the world by running a meaningful business. So, the idea is not just having a non-profitable social service but building a business that helps the community to solve the problems.

The slogan of company needs to be real and actual rather marketing trick. For example, Steve Jobs not just wanted to sell computers but he believed the bulky and business-oriented computers can become a small and personal computer. Google believed that they can build the most effective search engine for people and they built it. People needed video files to share and watch, so YouTube succeeded. Facebook care people, because people wanted to see things what they care not organized website by companies. Nike made people to believe in themselves to jog and start becoming athlete.

Elder Gay gave a talk on determination. When you believe in something and you can stand for it and even die for it always brings meaningful result and purpose to your life and the world.

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