What is a Guerrillapreneur

Guerrillapreneur is a combination of the words “Guerrilla” and “Entrepreneur,” and it is the name given to businesses that integrate a sharing and circular economic model principles into their core business to generate capital that will be invested in a “Slingshot Technology.” First, let me make sure I am clear on this definition.

What is a sharing economic model? A sharing economy is an economic model in which individuals are able to borrow or rent assets owned by someone else. The sharing economy model is most likely to be used when the price of a particular asset is high and the asset is not fully utilized all the time. For example, individuals who don’t need or can’t afford a car can use Uber to purchase transportation by the drive. Why buy an asset that will not be fully utilized and waste capital. Buy what you need.

What is a circular economic model? A circular economic model promotes greater resource productivity aiming to reduce waste and avoid pollution by design. Businesses generate waste of all types. Apple promotes billions of tons of waste when customers upgrade to the next iPhone. McDonalds, Burger King and Taco Bell generate food waste and automotive manufacturers have thousands of miles of outdated cars in junk cars that they view and waste. Could these businesses have designed models that accounted for the waste and turned it into a profit center? Guerrillapreneurs not only believe that the answer to this question is YES, they are zealots about the concept because they want to invest the savings into a Technology that will help them defeat the Goliath, a Slingshot Technology.

A Slingshot Technology helps a small business serve customers at price and service levels equal or better than the Goliath. Developing a Slingshot technology is critical because initially small businesses fight in Niche Markets avoiding the Goliath. If the small business never perfect the Slingshot technology, it will not have the capital to mount a campaign to defeat the giant. Slingshot technologies are perfected in Niche Markets before they are unleased in combat against the Goliath.

So let’s recap. Guerrillapreneur design businesses that convert waste into profit center and that also preserve cash by using “Products as a Service” and “Shared Platforms” ALL for the purpose of creating a market destabilizing capability to defeat the reigning Goliath.

1. Business Case Examples

1) Ford Motor Company

Henry Ford, the inventor of the assembly line, pioneered a circular loop system that let him improve wages and launch a separate company that still exists today.The assembly line that made the Model-T, left behind tons of wood scrap.Instead of tossing the wood scraps, Henry Ford cooked the wood and removed the chemical and made ash briquettes.The chemicals were reused in production and the briquettes were sold as charcoal.In fact, the bagged charcoals were so popular, the product was launched as separate business.Ford named the new company after the husband of a female family member, Kingsford charcoals.The profit from the charcoals enabled Ford to increase the wages for the men who worked on the assembly line.

2) Coca-Cola It takes 95 percent less energy to produce recycled aluminum than virgin aluminum, and 60 percent less energy to produce recycled PET than virgin plastic.

Coca-Cola sells approximately 12 billion bottles and cans a year; 100 percent of our bottles and cans are fully recyclable.In 2014, 34 percent of the PET KO purchased was recycled PET, and 27.8 percent of KO’s PET bottles were distributed in PlantBottle™ packaging made with up to 30 percent renewable materials from plants.

3) Unilever

Unilever strives to eliminate the concept of waste entirely by making smart sourcing a number one priority and ensuring any materials not used up in the manufacturing process are reused. Some materials are reused on site, some traded into other industrial supply chains, and the organics are composted. Achieving zero waste in Unilever factories has saved the company $226 million.

4) Frit-o-Lay Frito-Lay facilities in Turkey process waste from potatoes, corn, and broken chips in an anaerobic digester to produce biogas and organic digestate. The biogas generates 35 percent of the facilities’ power needs. The digestate is converted to compost and used to enrich soil for local orchards.

5) Starbucks Starbucks works with a Japanese contact lens manufacturer to repurpose spent coffee grounds into livestock feed, making those grounds even more valuable than garden compost. Local suppliers that deliver daily supplies to Starbucks stores pick up the spent coffee grounds and bring them to a special recycling center.

6) Waste Management Instead of dumping waste, Waste Management’s business model is taking those waste materials and putting them to their highest and best use: whether it’s recycling them, putting them into the product cycle, or extracting energy from them. We call Waste Management’s new business model “Extracting Value from Waste.” create enough energy through our waste-to-energy operations to power almost 1.1 million homes – equivalent to more than 21 million barrels of oil. By the end of 2009, we had increased our landfill-gas-to-energy plants to 124 (up from 119 in 2009). 2009 was also a year of planting the seeds for future growth in waste-to-energy with Wheelabrator’s expansion into Europe and China and the addition of a 17th waste-to-energy plant in the United States, which began operating in 2010.

7) Walt Disney

Walt Disney World Resort sends food waste — including grease, cooking oils and table scraps — from select restaurants in its complex to a nearby 5.4 MW anaerobic digestion facility owned and operated by Harvest Power. The organic waste is converted into renewable biogas (a combination of carbon dioxide and methane) to generate electricity, with the remaining solid material processed into fertilizer. The energy generated helps to power Central Florida, including Walt Disney Resort’s hotels and theme parks.

How Can These Concept Be Applied to Startups & Main Street Businesses?

Restaurants

Waste food and cooking oil can be used to generate energy. Don’t have enough waste? Partner with other small local restaurants and create an association. A group of 80 Paris restaurants, caterers and hotels is turning food scraps into biogas and compost ahead of a new law that will force thousands of French food outlets to recycle their organic waste[1].

Sell excess capacity in your assets to startups. I knew of a local restaurant that sold time to a local cookie company to use their commercial kitchen equipment after they closed in the evenings to bake their cookies. The Cookie company baked from 9:30pm to 4pm the next day. The restaurant got additional revenue for periods when they would have been idle and the cookie company saved its cash by not purchasing expensive assets.

Commercial kitchens are scattered all over the place. Most restaurants, and many churches, community centers and schools have kitchens up to code. Depending on their schedules, it’s likely that space sits empty at some point during the day. The Food Corridor, an app and online marketplace for shared kitchen space, says that’s a wasted opportunity.

Pop-Up Restaurants can also be an option for entrepreneurs who want to test the market and generate quick cash.Pop-ups are unique dining experiences that give diners a chance to try something new.According to a 2014 survey of 40,000 food and beverage events on its platform called “The Rise of Pop-Up Dining Events and the Experiential Diner,” Eventbrite found that pop-up events was the fastest growing trend within the food and beverage category, increasing in frequency by 82 percent from the previous year[2].

Law Office/Consulting Practice/Accounting Office

If you operate a law office, consulting practice you have un-used office and conference room space that is costing you money.Why not share that space with clients?

Law, consulting and accounting firms also have a lot of administrative labor and equipment that goes under-utilized, i.e., receptionists, copiers, administrative assistants.Why not market these physical employees as virtual employees to start-ups and small businesses and a lead generator for new clients?

Farmer Cooperatives

The sharing economy has finally come to farming. Farmers can use Machinerylink.com to find and rent idle farmer equipment.

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/paris-restaurants-turn-food-scraps-into-biogas/

[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/10/pop-up-restaurants-study-people-more-obsessed_n_7035394.html

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Mark Peterson is an entrepreneur, lecturer, freelance writer, author of Guerrillapreneur: Small Business Strategies for Davids Wanting To Defeat Goliaths and host of the podcast Guerrillapreneur: The Art of Waging Small Business Warfare. Peterson is also the Managing Executive of Ceyero Consulting Follow him @guerillapreneur or @ceyeroconsltg.