One Entrepreneur's Journey: Maggie Miller of the DiscoverHope Fund
Dec 1 in Smart Living 
This is part of a series called "One Entrepreneur's Journey," where I'm talking with solo entrepreneurs about their successes (and failures) along the path of entrepreneurship.
In this interview, I spoke with Maggie Miller, founder of the DiscoverHope Fund, an international development organization promoting abundance for women and their families living in economic poverty through micro-credit and sustainable support systems.
Tell me a bit about your organization and how you got your start.
We're an international development non-profit, and our primary goal is to help promote abundance for women and their families who are living in economic poverty. We do that through micro-credit and sustainable support systems. Really, that means two goals. We give micro-loans for macro-dreams. We give small loans that average about $100 a loan to help women initiate micro-businesses or small businesses. We follow that up by cultivating their passions and talents and asking them what they want and need to maximize their goals professionally, financially, personally. What that looks like and has looked like so far is literacy classes, health education, community health education, artisan education, culinary education, business education, all based on what women have asked for.
How I got my start as an entrepreneur and the start of Discover Hope was kind of path unfolding. I lived and worked in San Diego in non-profit for six years, before I ever was in South America creating Discover Hope or the idea of Discover Hope. In my non-profit work there, I was tasked with a charge to create a 16-week peace education program for kids who were in gang activities in San Diego, and I suddenly realized, I didn't know the first thing about being in that situation, and here I was supposed to the author of their information. That was the first time I really realized that you really need to ask people what they want and need, and it was a great lesson that transpired and is now a part of everything that I do.
One day I was working, loved everything I was doing, loved San Diego, and this still small voice and said, "You need to see with other eyes." It was actually half Spanish. It said, "You need to see con otros ojos," which means with other eyes, and I proceeded to ignore the voice, because I was comfortable in every way, shape, and form and didn't really want to take on what that might have meant, but it kept coming back to me in my meditations, my thought process, my prayer process. It wouldn't go away, and so I started reflecting on what it meant to see with other eyes. After about three months of reflection, I realized that that meant that I needed to step outside the boundaries of the United States of America for me, personally, to see myself from another perspective and as a change agent in this world.
I had a great mentor and friend who was a venture capitalist and entrepreneur working internationally, and this mentor was like, "Why don't you come to the mountains of Peru for a few weeks?" I told him, because of the reflection I had done, "No, I'm just going there." When I uttered those words, that was the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey. All of a sudden, I was giving my eight-month notice. I sold everything I had. I paid off everything that I owed, and I started absolutely at zero. I was quite frightened, because all of a sudden, I felt myself on the edge of a precipice and the universe in front of me, and all I could really do was trust at that point.
I got on the plane March 3, 2004, and he dropped me in the northern Andes, where nobody has blond hair, and nobody has blue eyes, which is both of what I have and look like, and I started my journey of knowing people from a different perspective. People were so gracious to me, and I spent about four months there as an ethnographer, studying culture by participation in it and asking women, "What do you want? What do you need?" I was talking to them in the markets and in the fields and in their kitchens over 500 cups of Nescafé coffee, and they all said the same thing. They wanted a hand up, not a hand out, and they wanted a window of opportunity for themselves to use their own personal power to step through and create their own businesses and sustainability for their families. Therein, I started studying micro-credit models and initiated Hope Bank, which was my two-year micro-credit pilot project that eventually became Discover Hope.
That's an inspiring journey, and I was thinking of a couple of words you said in there, and one of them was trust. You just had to trust what was in front of you. I think there comes a point when you just have to know intuitively what's inside you and just go with that, and if you do, a lot of times that leads to bigger things than you could have ever imagined.
When you have that small voice or that idea or that dream planted inside of you, no matter what it is, that doesn't go away. It just proceeds to grow and cultivate inside of you, and I think a lot of people, that's where their discontent actually comes from, is that they just keep pushing it down. The alternative is to look at it, and when you look at it, it means action and change, and fear comes up. I think it's just too much for people to think about sometimes, or circumstances of their life also don't allow them to, or they perceive don't allow them to, look at it.
Most entrepreneurs take that leap of faith and just trust it. Some people might call them risk-takers, but I think the risk comes in the not doing.
Right.
Let's talk a bit about strengths and weaknesses. What are some of the things that you're getting right as an entrepreneur, and what do you struggle with?
Weaknesses and struggles, I'd say my biggest weakness as a leader and entrepreneur has to do with control and letting go of control. When you birth this idea, you have ideas about what it should look like, how it should act, much like having a little child. After a while, your child has its own personality and starts doing what it wants to do and making its own decisions, and so as the organization has grown, you grow the body of people you consult with around you, the board of directors, the volunteers. They all have their own personalities, and they all have their own ways of getting things done. I've found the hardest thing for me is letting go of every detail, because I am a detail person, getting back up to vision level and not getting caught in the weeds, the everyday details.
I think that a good leader inspires people to really bring to life their passion, and I really do think that that's my strength. I am a facilitator of letting people build their dreams. Inspiring passion is definitely my strength, and it's also the one thing that I think I've done right. Every single person that comes to Discover Hope, the first thing I ask them is, "What do you really love?" I don't really ask people, "What do you do, and how can I fit that with Discover Hope?" I say, "What do you really love, and what are the experiences that you really love, where you just feel alive?" Everyone is just absolutely passionate, because they love what they're doing, because that's what they chose to do.
You also do that with the women that your organization helps. You encourage them to find their passion. How do you see that impacting them going forward, if they are able to connect with that?
I think it puts people in touch with their own personal power. I don't use the word "empowerment" in my mission statement or in the verbiage of my organization for one reason. I just think it's like, a person gives power to another person, and therefore, they're better off. I don't see things happening that way. I know it's just rhetoric, but I always say, "We open a door of opportunity." Whenever you open a door of opportunity for someone, like this precipice we're talking about, when a woman takes a micro-credit loan of $100, that is a decision that she has to make, to walk through this door of opportunity. That comes with responsibility and ownership. They have the opportunity to ignite their own personal power. When someone ignites their own power, their life changes.
I like that thought that someone else can't give it to you. It's within yourself, and when you unlock that, you're able to help and inspire so many more people around you.
Right. The president of my board said to me, "Your job is just to be who you are and hold that space." When you are that, people get it. It's like a magnet to them. The whole sentence, "Be the change you wish to see in the world," seems like this out there concept, but it's absolutely possible and doable, and it's right in front of us. The way that we do that is we wake up every day, and we give our greatest passion and strength to the world moment by moment, and if you really do that, it's magnetic. People see it in you, and they want to do everything they can to help you, because it's just exciting, and then after they do that for a while, they say, "This is really possible for me. I want this for myself, too." They start waking up and giving their greatest strengths to the world moment by moment, and they start affecting people the same way you affected them. In that way, if you think about how that all plays out, there is change.
How about things you wish you would have known earlier on?
The entrepreneurial journey isn't always sexy. That's literally the first thing that came to my mind. I didn't see all the pieces of that journey ahead of me and all the learning that I would have to go through. The responsibility around it is great, great as in large. It is a hard path, but what comes from it is a life growth that is unmeasurable.
I wish I would have known to build a team that fills your gaps. That's been one of the most important ways I've overcome obstacles and that feeling of not knowing.
What's your best advice for entrepreneurs?
Ask for help. You have to ask people to help you and allow people to do what they love. Along the way, focus on building networks. You'll find help within those networks.
I hope you are finding the "One Entrepreneur's Journey" series to be a valuable resource, filled with important information and advice to help you along your path to building a successful business. If you do, I please consider making a donation to the DiscoverHope Fund and be sure to share this series with other entrepreneurs and small business owners around you.
Reader Comments (2)
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www.TheYesmovie.com
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