Jay Cziraky on Duty, Community, and Building a New Philosophy for Small Business

By Kekeletso Nkele, small.news Assistant

Q: When you use that word duty, and in the context of what you see in business leaders, successful business leaders around the world, what are you seeing maybe is the first question?

A: First of all, it comes back to the word duty. I get criticized sometimes for using it because it seems too forceful or like shaming people. I didn’t even consider what the word duty really entails.

Duty is like an honor-bound obligation. There’s more out there than yourself. And this comes down to leadership, right? And what does that mean? That’s why I like the word duty.

If you have privilege, you should not retain it solely for yourself. That applies at any level of community or leadership, whether at home, in business, government, or the military. If you can use your time, energy, and resources for others’ benefit, you should.

That’s what it comes down to. If you don’t, you need to look in the mirror more. Your duty to your community starts with exploring your community.

Q: We’ve lost the perspective that this isn’t about giving back. Why do you think that’s not clear to more people?

A: It’s a forest-from-the-trees perspective. People spend so much time on just one aspect of the entire circle of fund movement.

And this is why we go back to this idea of actually reworking the code of economics. Because there’s actually nothing wrong with capital structures. There’s nothing really wrong with capital models.

All these things function, but they’re skewed because it’s not entirely circular. It comes down to words like sustainability, which are often misused.

So when you look at financial sustainability, that’s basically running enough water through the hose that there’s pressure coming on the other side. And that’s really what financial stability is.

People end up bankrupting their own cash commodities. You see this in North America and Europe in established economies where the global working economy includes people from lower-income to high middle-income. Anyone who works for a living has their financial dollars stretched.

Q: What do you think created this cultural shift?

A: It’s interesting and a good question. It depends on what area of the bell curve you’re in. We’re definitely in the early adopter stage.

To some degree, the market will tell us that. In the 80s, we really got into brand, and it went wild. Then the internet drove the tech boom and went wild.

Tech entrepreneurs didn’t become role models because of their nature but because the internet changed everything. In the 80s, leaders were about brand and MTV. Everything was built around brand leaders.

But on a positive note, I’ve been lucky even through the 80s, 90s, 2000s, and stuff; I worked with some amazing entrepreneurs, you know, and big entrepreneurs, like foundational DHL, things like that. And none of them were able to make money. I don’t know a single great entrepreneur that was in it for the money.

They were in it to build; they’re in it for adventure; they’re in it for a whole host of reasons. And you talk to them about what matters when they’re older, retiring; it’s all stories about what they did, the people they worked with, you know, breaking down barriers. So I think it’s there inside people.

Q: In the context of the no-end philosophy and small businesses specifically, what are you most worried about for small businesses?

A: We touched on it a bit: reasonable access to capital. Things like bank lines of credit can sink a small business. Smaller businesses may die during a downturn because we’re going to see a macro financial crisis that shortens spending for months or quarters before recovery.

And it’s making sure the small businesses can survive that dip. Yes. That, for me, is the number one.

So, reasonable access to capital is key to keeping small businesses alive. The second is reasonable access to funding to start small businesses.

The more funds we can provide to support small businesses, the better. I’m talking with a private fund in the United States whose mandate is to help more communities in poverty there.

You should be looking to recruit funding for small businesses in these vulnerable communities—100%. If you want to do a lot of good, that would be best.

Q: What’s the biggest opportunity with all this disruption?

A: Well, the opportunity is how we leverage technology, for sure. You can now reach a bigger consumer base than you’ve ever been able to with technology that works. And that should allow small businesses to take bites out of large corporate revenue across it.

Q: If you had a Magic Silver Wand, and you could make one thing true for every single small business in the world right now, what would you use your silver wand for?

A: That’s a great question, because I don’t want to go back to the need for reasonable funding, because that’s what it comes back to. It’s about empowering the customer, right? It’s about building that communication with customers and highlighting the power they gain by spending at a small business.

Because we need to drive increased revenue in small businesses, better margins in small businesses, and more real-time customer growth in the small business system. And if you look at the ones that are struggling, it’s usually a 20% increase in revenue.

Q: How do we support you?

A: We’re building a new socioeconomic philosophy for the future. We’re trying to build a new age of economics, which is a big thing. We’re trying to build a new ism. And we’re in the infancy of this.

So right now, what we’re looking for is friends. Now, we break our goals into really four quadrants, or four constituents, the way you look at it. One aspect is capital.

Individuals and organizations that think around capital, have capital, deploy capital, et cetera. You have the company side, whether that’s employees, entrepreneurs, business owners, and different things. How do they raise money? What do they use their capital for? And how do they use that capital for good? You have the consumers, the generation of all wealth, and consumer organizations.

This concept is how we build it, isn’t it? So that’s what we’re deeply working on. So any leaders in that are welcome to talk to us, and we’ll see how we can engage you in building a philosophy.

You can find us at noend.com, and it’s no-end.com. Wherever this is published, you can publish my email (Jay Cziraky jc@denesfa.org).

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