Gret Glyer is one of my favorite entrepreneurs. His story is truly inspiring. Gret graduated from Grove City in 2012 with an entrepreneurship degree and then went to work for a large corporation. He quickly began to rise through the ranks of the company. But then he realized that he didn’t like the way his career was going. In his own words:
“It wasn’t fun. It wasn’t fulfilling. If I didn’t show up to work tomorrow, it would be inconsequential. They would hire someone else to be the cog in their machine.”
So he quit his job and moved to Malawi to work as a teacher.
Gret has been living and working in Africa for 3 years, and in that time he started HOWMs, and organization that builds homes for orphans and widows. He has also undertaken several other fundraising projects including nets to rid a village of malaria and a school for girls. Most recently, he created an app called DonorSee to make it easier for people to donate to projects around the world and see how their donation is helping people. Gret has accomplished much in a relatively small amount of time, and it is incredibly motivating.
In addition to everything he does in Malawi, Gret also has a blog and a YouTube channel to continually give updates about his most recent projects. He discusses numerous topics in his brief video blogs, one of which is “Seven Lessons Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Africans.”
This list is just a brief summary of the content in Gret’s video. To fully understand these points, watch Gret’s video, posted below!
1. Smile!
“If you’re not using your smile, you’re like a man with a million dollars in the bank and no checkbook.” -LesGiblin
2. Upsell
“Would you like fries with that?”
3. Appeal to Emotion
“Africans are SO good at this. They look you right in the eye and convince you that they just want to make a living.”
4. Capitalize
“I usually get told a price that’s about three times more expensive than the locals get because, as an American, they know I have more money.”
5. Persistence
“Africans will follow you to your car to sell you something because, most of the time, if they get the sale, that means they get to eat that day.”
6. Fearlessness
“Africa is filled with terrifying things!”
7. Start Young
“The real, genuine learning doesn’t actually happen until you put something on the line.”