Love of nature, desire to fly and money

Well, over the past two years and three attempts to organize a business in the Dominican Republic, I decided to tell you how the desire to create and the ideas of humanism collapsed about bureaucracy and harsh reality, about the risks associated with the local mentality that must be taken into account in any country. And what does a pawnshop have to do with it?

The first was the processing of plastic waste from which it was planned to produce sand paving slabs, sand tiles for the roof, building blocks, as well as drainage and storm sewers for water drainage. And of course, this enterprise, in addition to employment and the possibility of additional earnings for the general population, had a great social orientation, environmental protection from plastic waste, plastic recycling and the production of less expensive building materials.

And secondly, the local production of aircraft similar to a helicopter known as a gyroplane for the needs of the military, patrolling difficult sections of the border, forest belts, for other state services, medicine, police, fire protection, for farms. At the same time, the entire structure, down to the screws, was produced according to drawings and standards in the Dominican Republic, and the power unit was imported and integrated into the finished device on site, by local engineers.

Having studied the opportunities and needs of the Dominican Republic, I began to study the prospects and build economic models. At the same time, all legal issues were within the competence of my business partners.

And if in the first business with plastic recycling by the end user, we saw the population of the country who would use these building materials for their own needs. In the second case, the end user is government agencies and services, and specialized pilot training, liability insurance, which means that this also affects related industries, education standards, and liability insurance standards.

And at first glance, these two businesses may seem similar, but in fact they have a radically different approach. In the second case, this is not a state order where there is a certain need for a state body and we enter our proposal into this framework, but this is an absolutely new form of interaction. With the help of which a new system is being formed with the organization of new related businesses and as a result additional financial opportunities.

Communicating with various officials, we went to the presidential palace to meet, unfortunately, not with the president, we realized that this business is possible and will certainly be built later, but without us.

What we thought turned out to be a reality, in state budgets and state security, at the moment we are not ready to interact with foreign citizens, and perhaps we did not understand how important the "entrance ticket" is even before the start of a substantive dialogue.

With plastic recycling, everything looked much easier at first. I did not place tricky equipment on the production site, by the way, this equipment can be made on site. Buy plastic from the population, buy sand from suppliers. Produce products and serve them successfully. And as it turned out, the devil is in the details. From the work of a realtor who cancels meetings before the meeting itself or simply does not answer the phone. Before the problems with the purchase of plastic waste, they simply do not bring them to the reception points, where we paid money for them. Seeing plastic garbage on the street, we did a test, placed ads for the purchase of plastic, when you could just walk down the street, collect plastic and hand it over at the station, but the volumes were tragically small. And then I decided to go to several schools and agree that we will put a separate container for plastic at them and we will pick it up, the same thing in a cafe. And here I can state with all responsibility! That it should be state propaganda of respect for nature, separate garbage collection, fines for leaving garbage on the street. Of course, a lot is being done in the republic, perhaps it is necessary to strengthen control.

Well, we abandoned this business for obvious reasons: unsatisfactory ROI, difficulty with raw materials, not obvious sales, low production volumes. And although we consider this business to be socially oriented, it is still not charity and the investor should receive his rate of return on invested capital.

And so you ask me, Alexey, at first you said about three businesses, but you tell me in detail only about two, and what is the third business?

And when I was looking for a space to assemble gyroplanes, I met a landlord who became my partner in the third business. I would describe my task in this business as a project manager and consultant. It's a pawnshop, yes, a pawnshop, but with a new, more modern approach.

I cleared certain indicators, as well as in the formation of the structure, I took into account the experience that was gained earlier when building a business. I came to the conclusion that due to certain features, we can reduce costs as much as possible, abandon low-income ones, thereby offering more favorable conditions.

We have moved away from the classic pawnshop premises, and reduced secondary costs.

They completely refused part of the collateral.

We have created an assessment of the borrower, which allows the borrower to receive a more favorable percentage upon repeated application.

The principle of working with overdue debts has been completely rethought and implemented.

New ways for the industry to attract a borrower have been introduced, work with the agency network has been fully built and tested. And the attraction of the client via the Internet is organized.

A new form of accounting for loans issued.

Loans are issued not only in cash, but also in non-cash form.

A flexible collateral assessment system has been introduced.

We have developed standards and implemented the possibility of fully remote work with the client.

And a number of other important innovations for this industry.

In test mode, with the help of "secret clients", we went through all stress tests, identified weaknesses and strengths, rethought some business processes, and abandoned some.

And starting from September 1, we are launching our pawnshop. Yes, I call him "our" despite the fact that my task has been completed completely and in the future I will provide only consulting services through contact and will not directly influence work and decision-making.