Masami Sato's Interview on Radio Singapore International

with Jason Tan Ming Chiang

Masami Sato, co-founder of Buy1GIVE1Free - Buy One Give One Free, is not just the group’s Chief Ambassador, but a successful author, inspirational speaker and entrepreneur.Her speaking engagements take her all over the world, along with frequent visits as part of her business commitments in Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Masami explains how her frequent travels benefit her work with Buy1GIVE1Free. She first explains that B1G1 is a unique idea that is right now transforming the world, and how it’s something that all of us can be a part of.

» Part 1
» Part 2

PART ONE

30th Jan 2008

Jason: On this week's edition of Global Citizens with Jason Tan, find out how an organization aims to change the world with a simple idea. Japanese-born Masami Sato (MS) is co-founder of Buy 1 Give 1 Free (B1G1).Apart from her work with B1G1, she is also an international inspirational speaker, author, and creative entrepreneur. She first explains that B1G1 is a unique idea that is right now transforming the world, and how it's something that all of us can be a part of.

Masami: If you imagine every time we buy something and we could actually give something instead of getting another one free, you know like "buy one get one free" is the current marketing term. Instead of that, we can actually choose to give something else. And that is the concept of B1G1. So we connect businesses and non-profit organizations around the world so that we can convert all the transactions we are a part of everyday, into a "Buy one, give one" concept.

Jason: How did you and your co-founders come up with this concept?

Masami: Well this idea, interestingly, came to us when my business partner David and I were running a food manufacturing company in Australia called Bouncing Olive. And this company had a unique concept. Every time a customer bought one of our products, we were actually feeding one child. And as we were growing our business, one day this idea came from somebody else and said "wow, that's buy one, give one free." And we thought wow, what a great way of expressing our company's philosophy and ideas. So we changed our marketing into "Buy One, Give One Free" instead of saying "when you buy it, you can feed a child." And we thought, instead of just one company donating money to feed children, if we could inspire a lot of other businesses to do that, then we can make a massive difference in a second. So that's how we actually transformed that idea to share this concept with a lot of other businesses.

Jason: You role with B1G1 is as a Chief Ambassador. Now I believe that English was not your first language, and I believe you also used to be afraid of public speaking?

Masami: (laughs) How did you get that information?

Jason: Oh, we have our sources … So how do you go from that to becoming an inspirational speaker for B1G1?

Masami: Right, well this is actually an interesting story because I used to have this phobia speaking in front of people. And it was the most difficult thing in the world for me. So when I started up in business, I couldn't even make a phone call. This was in New Zealand about seven years ago and I used to ask for support for people and said, "oh could you make this phone call because I can't understand what they're saying when I speak on the phone!" (laughs) But then of course in business, we have to do that, so I used to feel so afraid. Before making one phone call, I had to literally take a few minutes to calm myself down. And then interestingly around two years ago, one day I realized that I actually liked speaking. So then at that moment, I made a choice. OK, I will speak. And I had my first public speaking event after I rang my friend and said, "Oh could you actually give me a speaking opportunity?" I didn't know what I was going to speak about or anything and I stood in front of people and introduced myself, and started to speak. And from that moment, when I chose that I wasn't going to just feel afraid about anything, I would just do it, even if I would make a big mistake. So then I started to speak and it all became so natural. Then it started to create a lot of attraction and results, and so I got invited to speak in different countries, and so within a very short time, I realized that I was travelling around and speaking! (laughs) So that's how things started. Sometimes, when we are afraid of something so much, that could be because that thing so important to us. That's why we feel so afraid. So if we could just let go of the fear, we could actually transform our life and our life and our world.

Jason: Masami's travels early in her life would have a great influence on her work with worthy causes later in life.

Masami: When I finished studying in Japan, I decided that I wanted to go see the world. So I left when I was twenty, and after that, I travelled around the world, visited a lot of places, and met many people. And during that time, I actually met so many people, especially in Asian countries where people didn't have a lot of money, and you know, sometimes children come to me, and some of them didn't even have for example, arms or fingers, and they come to me and talk to me. And they're smiling and being really happy. So you know, that was one experience that I could never forget and later became one of the reasons why we started our business.

Jason: Tune in again next week to find out more about the organization, and how Masami's frequent travels benefit her work with www.b1g1.com .

PART TWO

6th Feb 2008

Masami: It really totally opens up our perspective. We travel around and see a lot of different people coming from different countries, different ideas, different environment, so we could easily think that we are all different. But then when we travel around and meet people, we actually notice that we are all the same, and we are all one. And it’s really benefit the way I work and contribute to our business, and also how I work with the people we work with because of the understanding that we are all the same, and it’s just a matter of bringing as many people, and inspiring as many people as we can to do something, because everybody wants to do something in life. But often we think we are on our own and our small action wouldn’t make any difference. But then when we actually start taking the first step or action to really do something, then it creates a massive difference. So the travelling experience I had adds to the concept of Buy One Give One because it’s all about bringing everything into one, in terms of believing that it’s actually possible when each one of us comes together. And it’s really happening so it’s really exciting right now.

What was the initial response from say, larger businesses when you approached them with this initiative?

Masami: I think initially, most of our supporters come from small to medium-size companies because what happens is those companies are more free to take action very quickly. And it’s not actually about if B1G1 is a great idea or has credibility or a track record, because I think everything around what we provide is the story of them. So each company just brings in the concept of effective giving into their business and it doesn’t have to be with B1G1. I mean, it’s not because the B1G1 is famous that is why they can touch people. They realize that they can actually just start to tell their customers, “by the way, when you eat at our restaurant, you feed a child and this is a picture of the child.” And the picture of the child is on the menu. No matter if people know B1G1 or not, the customer feels so inspired. And then, “wow, this is what I did.” And they start to talk about that business. So it actually doesn’t matter, people actually think “OK, well tomorrow I can just implement this idea by donating 30 cents.” That’s why we could actually attract people quite easily and quickly. And now the word of B1G1 is getting out there, and now we actually made is so simple and easy for anybody to come to our website and automatically make a contribution. So instead of focusing on corporate, because they would change their direction anyway when it becomes a big boom or trend. So if everybody talks about B1G1, then of course, the corporate groups would make a decision quicker but then I think each individual, when we can actually change our focus and make the shift, then that becomes the seed of a huge transformation. So for us, it wasn’t difficult to inspire people.

Masami explains that when B1G1 first started to match-make business with their worthy-cause partners, they realized that with one match, they could impact massive amounts of people. She shares one example of B1G1’s success in Singapore.

Masami: This Singapore company that sells international calling cards just came on board and we were looking at what sort of great story we can provide for that company in terms of marketing too. The owner of the company said “I’m actually originally from Indonesia and there are a lot of children in Indonesia still suffering from Tsunami and everything.” So he said he would really love to contribute back to Indonesia because also, a lot of people who are currently using that particular phonecard comes from Indonesia too. So we researched a lot of organizations and because this company is happy to donate a percentage of the sale, we realized that each card can now sponsor a child to go to school for one day. And phonecards are low-margin, so it’s not a massive amount of money. But then actually, just from somebody buying one card, now a child can go to school for one day. And they actually sell so many thousands of cards per month, so we realized that we can sponsor twenty-five thousand children per month. And that’s the power of B1G1.

To find out how you can support a variety of worthy causes as a business or an individual, head to their website at www.B1G1.com.

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