Hello

I believe a management expert once said, ‘What you can measure you can manage’. And then a friend of mine added, ‘But measuring what really matters is the real key!’ And then I read that ‘what get’s measured gets done’.

So today, out of curiosity, I decided to measure my ‘Thank yous’ and found out that I have already said the phrase 36 times and I actually wrote it 23 times.

Wow. It must be the most common phrase we use in our everyday life! Do we say anything else so many times in just one day?

When I was writing to a Japanese person and saying ‘thank you’, I looked at what I’d just written down in Japanese letters and was actually very intrigued. It said, ‘有り難う’. I know you cannot read Japanese. So, let me explain. ‘Arigatou’ (thank you) literally means ‘hard to be real’ if we looked at the meaning of the letters.

So, if our ‘thank you’ was actually gratitude for something that is very rare, why do we say it all the time? And do we actually mean it when we say it?

Sure, we already know the importance of thanking when we receive gifts. We were taught to say thank you when we receive anything from others almost since birth. And so it might become our habit to say it automatically without any special thoughts or feelings. And the moment that happens, it’s not authentic is it?

It occurs to me that realising that, is so important. Authentically saying ‘Thank you’ at every possible opportunity from our heart is the very core and true essence of Buy1GIVE1. When we’re truly grateful for the things we receive and experience, we would naturally feel like giving back (and forward) the gift.

When we remind each other and ourselves to feel grateful for each and every thing we have and do in our life even just for one whole day, we realise how incredibly blessed we already are.

And doing this everyday is the key to our joy, our happiness and our connectedness. Once we get that at every level, it becomes so easy to thank sincerely to fill our world with total abundance.

So, a very special thank you to you from every one of us for being an important part of the Buy1GIVE1 newsletter again this month.

  Masami Sato
  Founder
  Buy1GIVE1 - B1G1

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True Gift Hamper

As a part of the special privilege of being part of the Buy1GIVE1 community, we always get to meet and speak with some incredible people. One of this month’s special gifts for us was meeting the Vice-President of Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) - the company that dominates the news industry in Singapore.

We had a thirty-minute meeting scheduled which ended up becoming a two-and-a-half-hour meeting as he decided to cancel everything in the afternoon to spend more time with us to share his passion for giving. His name is Peter Khoo. He’s humble, inspirational and enormously insightful.

Success and Abundance Inside
Peter started his journey as a humble reporter for the Straits Times, the number one newspaper in the country. And 8 years ago he led a team of investigative journalists to look at the nationally-celebrated Children's Day in Singapore. ‘In this rich nation, we were stunned to find 2,037 kids in real poverty’, he says.

And when the newspaper decided to do something about that, the Chairman asked Peter to lead the team to create what is now a national legacy, the School Pocket Money Fund. Peter knew nothing about fund-raising or about charities. All he knew was creatively he could make something work. And he knew it needed heart (he has a huge one) even when the entire media world seems to be focusing more on issues and criticisms. His mission became one of bringing Corporate Social Responsibility closer to the culture and the heart of the company - in a unique approach.

The ‘School Pocket Money Fund’ gives pocket money to children whose families are in severe financial difficulties to make sure all children get to have proper lunch at school. It now serves over 8,000 families. ‘It’s hard in our culture for families to admit they have challenges,’ he says. ‘There can be a stigma attached. But through a gentleness of approach, we’re now finding even more people to help. And that’s good!’

Peter’s come up with many unique ways for fund raising and has already raised over ten million dollars over the past years. As he was sharing some of the stories, we saw a cheeky grin on his face like a little child. He then started talking about some of his playful ‘schemes’. This one is, we think, a classic:

“You know, as an established media organisation, we receive a massive amount of corporate gifts from everywhere. Normally just executives are treated with such gifts and so much is wasted and untouched.
And our book reviewers get lots of books to review. Our music critics get lots of CDs. Our food critics get lots of wine AND food. And all this ‘stuff’ just hangs around on their desks as if it’s theirs.

So one day we ‘confiscated’ all the gifts and we put them in our auditorium and hosted a bazaar. The room was soon filled with all kinds of things like books, CDs, bottles of wine and sweets.

And then we invited all the lower paid personnel (the cleaners, the guards and so on) who work here to go into the room to buy the gifts at 10-20% of market value. Then some of the new hires were let in to buy the rest at slightly higher prices. Next was the middle-management team with each team having just one hour. Then finally at the end of the day, the entire top management group were guided into the auditorium. We told them their task was to totally clear whatever was left in the room at 100% of the market value. And every single thing was bought with all of the money going straight to the School Pocket Money Fund.

We raised a lot of money on that day. And more importantly, we still continue to do this as our company ’s joyful regular bazaar.”

Joyful Win-Win
What is so interesting is Peter’s humility and genuine passion to take every opportunity to create higher values and more synergy in the company. All his ideas are full of fun and value for everyone involved. And he strongly believes in creating a win-win and sustainable change. He’s recently been honoured by the President of Singapore for not only believing in those things but actually doing them each and every day.

When we are working for a company, we may end up thinking it is just a job. But being an active part of our organisation is also an important key to creating a massive change in the world. If we all take our work (either working for a company or in our own business) as our ultimate ‘life purpose’ and do our best each day to make a difference in our own environment, we can actually be the one to touch millions!

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Honestly Woman - the World’s First Buy1GIVE1 Magazine


The very first ‘Buy1GIVE1’ magazine just started contributing and giving back through the new Buy1GIVE1 online mechanism last month.

The Power of Sharing
Many thanks and congratulations to Bev Ryan, the editor of Honestly Woman magazine for making it happen (and for making a difference).

There are already many authors who choose to use the Buy1GIVE1 ‘plumbing system’ and branding to make their giving easier, consistent, involving and powerful. They use Buy1GIVE1 to give either to environmental causes or education causes, making B1G1 books possible for example. However, Honestly Woman actually was the very first magazine to start contributing actively through B1G1. Media and publication always have so much influence in global education, inspiration and empowerment. Bev has opened up the doorway now for the whole media industry to start B1G1 transaction-based giving. And she’s sharing the joy of giving every second, every day in every way.

Making it Happen - Dreams to Reality
A single parent in mid-life, with no backers apart from her own self-belief, Bev’s entrepreneurial vision was to create a magazine and a business that adds value to the world and that becomes a part of others’ success.

Interestingly and synchronistical enough, the first issue of Honestly Women back in March 2006 contained an article about four entrepreneurial Asian women running food businesses in Brisbane, Australia, and Masami (founder of B1G1) was one of them. Bev explains, “A young writer sent me the article for the magazine and I went to take photos of Masami; at that time her business was the ‘Bouncing Olive’ - a healthy food production business. I was so impressed by her enthusiasm and her plans then for a much larger social enterprise. We lost touch after the magazine came out, so I am delighted now two years later to become a part of what Masami has created since then, and I’m updating my readers in the October issue with the story of B1G1.

Honestly Woman is a business journal for women, and now has the extra capacity through Buy1GIVE1 to do so much more for others; along with our clients, both advertisers and subscribers, we can all now contribute to the world with us as socially-aware partners in a meaningful and effortless way.”

Australian and international subscriptions are available from www.honestlywoman.com.au Join Honestly Woman’s networking lunch.


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A Word from Bill - Yes, THE Bill Gates

You'll be aware of Bill Gates recent departure from Microsoft to focus full-time on giving, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that’s created a lot of media commentary, most recently the front cover of TIME magazine. And we’re so grateful. Because it reminds each one of us that creating effective giving in business and in our life is now a ‘movement’. That’s such a significant shift and one that we’ll be writing more on soon for you.

Bill Gates has coined the term ‘Creative Capitalism’ which in short refers to business responsibility (and opportunity) to give back. In his lead (and leading edge) article in TIME, Bill Gates writes:

"More than 30 years ago, Paul Allen and I started Microsoft because we wanted to be part of a movement to put a computer on every desk and in every home. Ten years ago, Melinda and I started our foundation because we want to be part of a different movement - this time, to help create a world where no one has to live on a dollar a day or die from a disease we know how to prevent. Creative capitalism can help make it happen. I hope more people will join the cause."

Consumerism to 'Circulation-ism'

Who Likes Being a ‘Consumer’?
Very few of us might like to be called a ‘consumer’.

But it is true that we all buy things in life. We use things and throw things away. So, we are consumers and we practice ‘consumerism’. And maybe if we just keep consuming and consuming, there will soon be nothing left. Or maybe the world would just create more and more at the same speed as our consumption? Who knows?

What we do know is this: if we kept giving back the same amount or even more every time we received something, there would be no end to the resources.

Recycling to Circulating
When we get the giving going, it’s not ‘consumerism’ any more, it’s ‘circulation-ism’.
Even if we recycle everything (like we try to do these days), it’s still not a circulation. It’s a way to reduce the speed of consumption not the total circulation. We are here to circulate the same or greater amounts to keep creating more abundance.

Recycling can also use a lot of energy resources and can create significant environmental impacts. So we can’t be totally relieved by the fact that we recycle. It is, though, one great way to slow down the speed at which we take things from the world. So for now, consider recycling simply as a method of ‘speed reduction’.

‘Circulation-ism’ is different. Here’s why.
Any natural circulation of life happens automatically in nature. And it just happens to keep creating more and more abundance. If there are no seasons, certain species can’t live. Even if there are no well-defined seasons in certain countries, there are still sunny and rainy days, high tides and low tides, day and night and so on. Even our natural body cycles would stop if the planets stopped circulating.

'Thank you' Every Time

When we buy and read a book, how much of a tree did we consume? How much ink and energy did we consume? To offset the impact, we may need to only plant a tenth of one tree (this is just an example because the real facts vary). For example, if a business chose to give around 30 cents from the sale of a book toward planting a tree, it already offsets the use of paper. Because there are people planting trees for us as charitable activities. How wonderful!

Some businesses may choose to take it even further. We can then recycle, re-use and re-create things to even more effectively circulate everything. But we don’t have to rely on the ‘speed reduction’ method to sustain the world. Looked at in this way, recycling is an additional benefit to the most effective circulation system (let’s call it the ‘Thank You System’) we can joyfully create together.

We can become more and more creative with our imagination to recreate more resources than the resources we use. Or we can give away something to someone else to give a gift forward as a part of our circulation life - saying “Thank you” at every opportunity we can possibly find.

Welcome to the world of Buy1GIVE1 - B1G1!