Speak always to create joy

Language creates reality. Words have power. Speak always to create joy -

Deepak Chopra

Summary - a call to action

Please come and explore the opportunity to invest in Taking Speak To Your City. This is a real-time opportunity to do something, after so much inertia about these issues. An opportunity to create value for people in your community, with your community, by Taking Speak to Your City.

Please contact me if you are interested in a Speak Franchise or supporting potential Franchisees. Please look out for further postings published soon. Please help me share these messages and direct people to me if you are able.

I do have and have set targets within a strategy for this work; so please ask for further information.

You can reach me at [email protected]

Introduction

It has been three years since Hugo Menino Aguiar invited me to Accept, Value and Empower Diversity; which I have been doing as a mentor and adviser to his startup in Portugal. It has been a privilege to speak for Speak and talk their talk. Now they have challenged me to walk a little in their shoes, and walk their walk.

Over the next year I will be supporting the development of their Social Franchise pipeline.

Accessible at any time to interested people, and working on this proactively part-time, each week, you can reach me at [email protected].

Speak Social is a social enterprise, which aims to be fair-profit and grow the platform and community to achieve measurable societal impact at scale, a massive social profit for people migrating between countries and communities. At Speak Social you can learn a language and about different cultures. You can teach your language and your culture. You can share with your friends and build a wider community. Speak is scaleable because of its clever technology and through social franchising.

Speak Social franchises are therefore one of the things Speak sells, an opportunity to take Speak To Your City. Speak has secured initial investment and is totally committed to executing the next phase of growth in one of the most critical areas of society.

Conversations and relationship building

The people I am interested in starting a conversation with might be asking themselves these questions,

• Should I go into business for myself?
• Should I go into the “widget” business?
• Should I go it alone or buy a widget franchise?
• Should I buy this widget franchise, or that widget franchise?

These people my also be able to relate to these experiences and feelings,

• Independence
• Being your own boss
• Flexibility
• Controlling your destiny

The most independent and entrepreneurial people go it alone OR are well-matched to smaller, early-stage franchising enterprises. For some market opportunities and arguably many more complex societal issues which require scaled solutions, going it alone may be the wrong choice. For those most interested in changing the world, we might expect people to either develop enterprises which can be replicated and/or consider investing in and leading a franchise where a really great model already exists. That would be a smart choice. We certainly need all these choices to be exercised.

Speak’s smaller size, early stage of development, bold ambition, and the massive, complex social issues involved, SUITS entrepreneurial people to become partners.

• There are more opportunities to lead HOW the franchise actually works in your area.
• There are more opportunities to INFLUENCE your community as a whole.
• There are more OPPORTUNITIES to benefit from the scale of your franchise and the scale of the community of franchises.

Actually, being a Entrepreneur Partner with Speak could be like running your own accelerator! You will be unlocking considerable creative human capital, and who knows where that could go.

Society needs models like this and entrepreneurial leaders to pioneer them.

Is this you?

You will already have decided you want to make a difference. You are considering how you might create value for other people, and this what makes entrepreneurship interesting to you. You want to do well, while doing some actual, measurable good. You want to achieve this with a community which means something to you. This is what makes social entrepreneurship attractive to you.

You are interested in migration, languages and culture. You are wondering if there is an enterprise which can be bigger than a project, and deliver even more impact that volunteering for an organisation. Ideally, this would be something you could invest in and grow, but not need a large amount of capital to get started and be something that could leverage local sources of alternative funds and different revenue streams. You have your own ideas so you wonder if you should go it alone. You also wonder what it would be like to share those ideas and this challenge with others. You wonder if there might be a quicker and better way to achieve all this, than going it alone. You are open minded enough that you’d be happy to borrow things that others have tried and worked, to get going quicker, while also sharing what works for you!

Migration and culture and language and the potential of these when mixed together, is incredibly powerful. The issues associated with all this are complex. Some would say Europe is facing a massive crisis. Whether you see it like this, or see the opportunities people are missing, any idea you have about tackling it all, has to be capable of scaling efficiently to tackle the challenges and leverage the opportunities. It has to be investment ready. It has to be able to plug into the eco-systems that exist to support such endeavours, yet which might still be embryonic in your city or focused elsewhere.

This is principally the reason why Speak is scaling through franchising. The opportunity means you can invest and lead in a powerful community effort, an enterprise tailored to your city.

This community approach crowd-sources a unique support system to solve a complex set of issues in a sustainable way.

This system also offers YOU unique support, both in terms of people and technology. This system completely removes ever being isolated. From the start you’ll feel nimble and part of something big at the same time. Which makes us even!

YOU may also be plural. You may be based in an organisation already working in this area, or with migrant communities. You may be able to incubate a franchise, spin-off a franchise or operate a franchise as a trading arm. You might be working with older people and understand the power of learning language and culture exchange to prevent the impact of dementia. You might be an already successful migrant entrepreneur looking for a way of investing back and building your network of entrepreneurial people from similar backgrounds. You might be at creative professional or an arts organisation that appreciates that language is perhaps the most inclusive art form ever discovered. You might be one of those ambitious mayors who relishes being held to account and having measurable impact to show for it.

My story

I was immediately inspired by the team and model when introduced. Over time they have demonstrated really valuable capabilities. As a result I trust the founders and respect the whole team.

Migration, it’s causes and effects, have been central to the context of my work since 2010. I’m a migrant. I have my own experience and I’ve been both embedded with teams of refugees and migrants growing enterprises from scratch, and always touched by stories of migrants and displaced people I have met on my journey and theirs. While the brief of my own enterprise has been wider than migration, it is undoubtedly one of the issues that if I could do something about directly, then I would. So I am.

I am because Speak offers a systemic solution and will achieve impact at scale.

Call to action

Please come and explore the opportunity to invest in Taking Speak To Your City. This is a real-time opportunity to do something, after so much inertia about these issues. An opportunity to create value for people in your community, with your community, by Taking Speak to Your City.

Please contact me if you are interested in a Speak Franchise or supporting potential Franchisees. Please look out for further postings published soon. Please help me share these messages and direct people to me if you are able.

I do have and have set targets within a strategy for this work; so please ask for further information.

You can reach me at [email protected]