The Unsung Hero of Brazil
By Francisca Gilmore, Growth Lead
There are many unsung heroes at Premise, but chief among them is Luís Garcia, our country manager in Brazil. In fact, today marks his three-year anniversary with Premise. To put this into perspective, Premise didn’t launch from stealth until October 2013. In that time, we’ve grown from six to 34 countries, and from a few hundred contributors to tens of thousands.
In other words, a lot can happen in three years.
Luís first heard about Premise in April 2013 while scanning Craigslist for translation jobs. Like most of our country managers, he started as a data contributor (or “price spotting” as we called it back in the day). He’d leave his job at a bank around 6 p.m. and swing by a few grocery stores to collect some observations and earn a bit of extra money. A month later, in May 2013, we promoted him to city manager.
Between September 2014 and September 2015, our network presence in Brazil increased from 10 to 34 cities. As of this month, we have a presence in 39 cities, the smallest of which is Casa Nova (population: 65,000) and the largest of which is Luis’s hometown of Sao Paulo (population: 11 million), the most populous city in the Southern Hemisphere.
Luís was interviewed for a feature about Premise that appears this month in Wired (on newsstands now in the UK if you happen to live there!). As he told Wired UK’s David Baker, “As I got closer to Premise, I realised that the work touched my most noble values — equality, transparency and wealth redistribution. Brazil is the face of inequality and the phone is a great equaliser.”
Late last year, we launched a new network in Bangladesh and I asked Luís to put together a few thoughts about some lessons he’s learned over the years while overseeing our network in Brazil. Internally, we’ve come to call this the “Luís manifesto” for reasons you’ll understand once you read it.
Thank you, Luís.
— — — — — Forwarded message — — — — —
Hey there Patrick and Khalid,
Hope this e-mail finds you two well.
I’m writing to share some of the ideas and thoughts I gathered during the time I’ve been a CM with Premise. As you know, I started in 2013. My initial goal was to grow the network from 8 to 20 users. Today we have a presence in 39 different cities. I won’t lie: it took serious hard work.
I think what kept me motivated, and still does, is the sense of purpose. Premise’s mission is to bring financial empowerment to its contributors while also collecting data that helps us better understand the world. We are giving people the opportunity to earn money using their Android smartphones, and with great flexibility. We are very serious about paying people on time, which helps us build trust with people.
I have tons of life-changing stories across the network. People who have had their lives transformed because of Premise; stories that I can tell you on a different occasion. But what I want you to know right now is that Premise empowers people. Your ethnicity does not matter. Nor your gender. This work gives people a sense of purpose.
There are some things I’ve learned and that I think might be helpful for you to keep in mind in order to be an outstanding Community Manager:
- You are the hands, eyes and brain of the company at the local level. Essentially, you ARE Premise in Bangladesh and with that comes great responsibility. In addition to conveying us professionally, you should also think ahead in terms of identifying opportunities and ways to improve our presence in Bangladesh. Stay close to the team in SF and earn their trust with reports that mirror what happens on the field.
- Onboarding is where the magic happens. Once you have someone’s attention, you have to take advantage in every possible way to make that person a regular user. We’ve worked hard to develop a set of training resources that address the app, payment information, support contact forms, the works. It’s intended to be light and simple, and should work on a $50 phone or on a $1000 device. Always follow-up with new contributors. This helps earn trust.
- Data quality is our first and foremost concern. Our raw material is data. We have data for breakfast, lunch and dinner. So guess what? We can only have best quality data. There is no way around this, so as soon as you train your users to grasp this concept, the better for you. We wouldn’t have the customers we have without having the highest quality data.
- User engagement and community building is something that comes up naturally. There will always be doubts, troubleshooting, support, hand-holding and general interaction. This should be a huge part of your day and you should make yourself available via any means of contact they prefer: WhatsApp, instant messages, phone, Skype, e-mail. Answering on time and with good information is also important to building trust.
- As you build your community, you will want to pull everyone into a Facebook group, which we find helps bring people together and keeps them engaged. Collecting data can be a solitary activity, so this helps build a strong community of people.
- Experimenting with new strategies and prioritizing your work is also one of your tasks in Bangladesh. Just like with everything, you will always have goals and deadlines and this is when your relationship with users come in handy. Bonding and earning a user’s trust is important because you cannot meet your goals without them. There will be times in which you’ll have to make specific requests or launch a new campaign, and this is when you’ll need your community to work for you. Having them in the same place and not scattered around, together with the same mindset and values, will make things much much easier. Even then, make sure you connect with them at an individual level if you feel you have to. Sometimes a personal request is the only way to get something done.
- Disseminate Premise’s culture and vision. I might sound repetitive here, but we are a tremendous company with a tremendous mission. Tell people what we are doing in Nigeria, Brazil, China. Show them our Instagram account, spread the word. It’s your responsibility to let everyone know what we are doing and why it matters.
Keep working hard and go for it. If you have any questions at all, please let me know.
Best of luck,
Luís
