An Embarrassing Case Study (Aymara)
Photo by Jorge Barahona on Unsplash.
This is the third in a three-part blog series on real-life people who had an idea to create a social enterprise, and risked going through the messy, embarrassing, vulnerable first steps to explore whether that dream might be possible. Here, I interview Sandra Codd, Founder of Chakana, about those early steps towards launching her early-stage social enterprise with Aymara women in Chile.
What was it like for Sandra to launch her idea? How did she go about testing whether it was viable? And how did she navigate the discomfort that came up for her in the process? Let’s find out.
1) Please tell us a bit about you and your social enterprise.
I’m Sandra Codd, certified NLP coach and founder of Chakana. The idea for a social enterprise was born during my time working as an interpreter for multinational companies in Chile, where I’m from. It had little shape then, apart from the desire to change the way the status quo regarded female entrepreneurs, especially those from indigenous backgrounds. The dream of building a network of support for women living in rural areas in northern Chile and helping them to bring business ideas into concrete shapes took form under the Chakana name.
There’s a story behind the name. ‘Chakana’ is an Aymara word meaning ‘Southern Cross’: the constellation that travellers used to track their route. Like Chakana, we aspire to become a beacon for indigenous women in remote communities, by integrating our coaching and business tools with their ancestral knowledge. Chakana is based on mutual learning.
We’re presently a small team and are in the early stages of our work. We’ve successfully established a caring and respectful collaboration with Aymara women from the small community of Nama, northern Chile. We’re learning from them how we can support small, women-run businesses in their community, helping them preserve traditions, look after the environment, and make progress towards a more egalitarian society.
2) Lots of us have ideas for ages and never act on them. What pushed you to see if you could actually make yours a reality?
The desire to focus on something bigger than my own needs. As a life coach and compassionate resilience coach, I worked on several social projects while living in Chile, where I’m from. Those projects included working in schools in socially deprived areas, and also with minority groups. By learning how those incredibly strong women kept the family going, the idea of creating a bigger support for them was born. It is their strength and sense of humour that pushed me to go the extra mile.
3) Can you tell us about one hypothesis you wanted to test in the early stages of exploring your idea? What experiment did you run, and what did you learn from that?
In the early stages I wanted to test the idea of creating circles of support for women in rural areas, focusing first on indigenous women. As an outsider to their community, I felt that creating a link of trust was pivotal. We set up informal talks to test the waters with a few women already running small businesses, and created a simple questionnaire for them to answer regarding their community needs. Overall, those informal conversations via WhatsApp, and then some face-to-face conversations that my colleague held with them, were extremely successful in building trust and opening channels of communication.
4) What did you personally find most scary or challenging about running this experiment?
Honestly, it was scary to risk the community’s rejection of our idea. If that had been the case, it would have meant the end of the idea or the reshaping of it. I also found it challenging to go beyond my own area of expertise in order to give shape to my original concept.
5) What helped you work through this fear (or act despite feeling scared)?
My turning point was the Good Ideas incubator, where I worked with you, Megan. It really helped me to work with the support of a group of people that were also invested in creating social changes. The knowledge we gained, the mutual support, and the time we committed to explore, test and verbalise our dreams was pivotal in overcoming the little voice in our ears that sometimes is not as kind as we would like it to be. Self-doubt kills more dreams than external rejection.
[Note from Megan: if you’re not currently able to get involved in a formal incubator like Good Ideas, the message to take from Sandra here is to not try and do it alone! There are lots of online support options, whether that’s group support, informal accountability groups, or 1:1 coaching.]
6) What advice would you give an aspiring entrepreneur who wants to test their idea, but feels intimidated by the prospect?
There is nothing worse than the ‘what if.’ Surround yourself with people who support you and are on the same page as you. Don’t listen to the ‘naysayers.’ And remember: ‘success is a collection of well-curated failures.’