Today, we have the privilege of sitting down with Robin P. Belle, a Strategic “JVC” Business Development expert known for his unwavering focus on using technology to drive 360° sustainability impact. With a track record of crafting strategic models, innovative value propositions, and leveraging emerging technologies, Robin has consistently accelerated revenue growth for diverse ventures. His unique approach to “Joint Venture Capital” goes beyond finance, fostering collaborations that generate both sustainable and financial gains. Let’s delve into Robin’s insights on reshaping industries, from Blockchain/FinTech to Smart Cities, and how he envisions the future of strategic business development.
Robin, your journey as an entrepreneur and your commitment to sustainability are truly inspiring. Can you share a bit about your childhood experiences or early life influences that might have played a role in shaping your passion for business and making a positive impact on the world?
Sure, the “Business Bug” bit me unexpectedly one summer in my late teenage years. I don’t remember what I did wrong but my Mum grounded me one summer. That resulted in two things. First, I ended up watching cable TV quite a bit, specifically two shows – Bloomberg Business and BBC “Click”, which was a technology show highlighting innovative physical and software tech. I was hooked. I remember saying to myself, “Man, with what I know now, I’ll be retired by age 30!” Yeah right… Anyway, that show planted a technology focus in me from that point, which has become my “earthly north star” so to speak.
I told my daughter once… “Ky, if you ever find yourself stranded in a strange country with no way to make money to survive, don’t go looking for a job, just head to an Internet cafe or find Free WiFi, then get on Google to research the latest innovative software tools for restaurants and shops, then act as a consultant and go show them how you and the game-changing “tech” you “have” and know how to use/implement, can boost their business. Then you’ll have dozens of “micro-jobs” in no time, which is a level of job security you won’t find in a single salaried “job” – the collective earnings will be much more rewarding too!”
The other profound thing that happened while I was grounded that summer, was that to “find work for idle hands” as she so eloquently put it, Mum took me to a “Handicraft Store” one day and bought me a big box of wooden sticks… those flat wooden sticks that are placed in the center of those “ice cream on a stick thingies” – I admit, I don’t remember what they’re supposed to be called! Lol. Along with the box of sticks, Mum bought me a small Craft booklet the size of a magazine but much thinner. In that were dozens of different designs that could be made using those lolly sticks – hey, that’s what they’re called, lolly sticks, right? Well, I wasn’t terribly thrilled about fiddling with sticks all day, gluing them together with white “Elephant Glue” to make things, after all, that was a far cry from the exciting tech stuff I was seeing on BBC Click and the Stock Market companies’ stocks on Bloomberg going up and down, making some people millionaires… now that was fascinating.
Anyway, I started making stuff with wooden sticks, and in no time, I was making elaborate 4-foot tall lamps and lampshades using elaborate spiral patterns as shown in the booklet. It wasn’t long before people came to our house to see my parents, caught sight of them, and guess what, they fell in love with them! Ka-Ching! I remember selling the first lamp for BD$95 and feeling financially liberated! I never asked for allowance money after that, I was hooked on “doing business” 🙂 There wasn’t anything sustainability-focused about it back then of course, but it was my start in business, all thanks to my getting grounded and thanks to my Mum’s wisdom to give me something “creative” to do with my hands, like her… she was big on craft work, so I guess I got that creative gene from her.
Can you share an instance where you faced a personal challenge or setback and how you overcame it, ultimately leading to your personal growth as an entrepreneur?
Well, when I was at what is called “Community College” doing “A Level” subjects as they are called in the Caribbean (A meaning “Advanced” – one step up from “O Level”/Ordinary Level certification), I discovered the game of chess which was popular at the college. As it turned out, I spent way too much time playing chess instead of studying, so when the exam came, the marks I got were only equal to the same “O Level” certificates I already had, so no “A Level” certificates for me… bummer.
My parents were disappointed obviously and my Dad asked me if I wanted to go and study overseas as my sister had done. I didn’t think too long about it and I told him “no” a day or two later, saying that I prefer to get a job now rather than spend 4 years more studying. Dad wasn’t thrilled but he didn’t fight me on it. He got hold of a friend who owned a local printery and the next thing I knew, I was offered a job as a “Trainee Graphic Artist” in their small Art Department. So while I had experienced that “education setback” that would supposedly harm my job prospects, I put that out of my mind and enjoyed learning the Graphic Design process and skills.
There was only one other person in the art department at the time and that was the Art Director. After a few weeks of getting to know each other, we discovered that we were both born on the exact same day of the same year, at the same local hospital. Crazy! We really hit it off as friends, or as we both liked to call each other, “my brother from another mother”. If that wasn’t coincidental enough, one day he stopped in at his parent’s house with me in the car and invited me to come in to meet them as I’d never been there before. I kid you not, when I stepped into the living room, I was speechless and my face just went pale as if I saw a ghost, I was later told. On that living room floor, was the exact same carpet design and size that was on my parents’ living room floor at that same time. Unbelievable. I felt like my friend and I were from parallel universes or something!
Well, within 3 months of taking that first job and getting to know the Art Director, “my brother from another mother”, I did yet another thing that caused a stir in my house. I quit the job and so did my Art Director boss/friend because we had decided to go off and open our own Graphic Design Studio! So that’s what we did and I got to experience having real clients that loved and really appreciated the work we did for them. So if I hadn’t flunked the A Level exams, I would probably have gone on overseas to university and would have never met Andrew, who is my longest-standing and great male friend to this day.
Andrew eventually wanted to go into the food/restaurant industry and so I went on my own in graphic design, then on to publishing, fashion and model management, photography, web design when computers proliferated, then mobile app design and social media marketing. It was a rewarding experience going from “lowered expectations” to open doors of possibility in business, which built in me a heart of resilience and a mindset that every so-called adversity is really a “seed of opportunity” just waiting to be noticed, to be planted and ultimately, to flourish.
How do you believe your education, particularly your background in Graphic Design and Advanced Computer Design, has shaped your approach to business and contributed to your success in the entrepreneurial world?
The graphic design “on the job” PRACTICAL vs THEORY education taught me that “seeing” firsthand how something is done, that visual clarity, is very powerful. That realization was actually in my subconscious for quite some time after I left that job, but more and more it began to surface and shaped my approach to winning new business.
For example, when computers began to get more common locally, “everyone and their mother” decided that Microsoft Word made them graphic designer… sigh… and there was suddenly a lot of people hustling to get graphic design work, although what they could do was far from professional, imho. So both the good graphic designers and the bad ones would constantly be reaching out to hotels and restaurants and Stores telling the owners that they could do this and that for them re brochures and flyers (and later on, websites).
As for me, I took a different approach, one that cemented in my mind that I was not someone who just followed the status quo approach to anything – I saw myself as being “Different” – innovative, bold, someone who was fine with calculated risk based in confidence in my ability. So I liked tourism businesses and decided to go after hotels as clients in particular.
Oh, by the way, I should mention that once my Dad saw that I was fully committed to doing graphic design and related business, he offered to buy me whatever equipment I would like to make my work easier. Well, I had discovered Apple computers by then and I got my Dad to buy me the top-of-the-line Apple computer box and their largest monitor, which was a 21-inch monster of a thing back then! I also got him to buy me Apple’s Digital Camera – yes, Apple actually made and sold a Digital Camera at one point and I was probably the only person on our Island (Barbados) to own one at the time. That camera gave me a serious competitive edge, which only cemented in my mind, the power of leveraging new, emerging technologies before everyone else.
I remember going to a political event one night to take photos as part of a series of newspaper ads for a client, then rushing over to the newspaper offices to download the images and include them in the next ad, just in time for the paper to go to press at midnight. The papers hit the streets about 6m the next morning and the whole of Barbados was “abuzz” talking about how the newspaper could have photos of an event that happened less than 12 hours prior! Man, those days were fun times for me, I was the tech man of the hour! Lol
So, to get hotel clients, what I would do, is walk onto the property of a hotel, go straight to their “brochure rack” in the lobby area, and examine their brochure. If it was poorly designed (as they often were), I’d put one in my pocket and then walk around the property taking “thoughtfully framed” photos of the property, many with unique angles and perspectives.
Then I’d go home, download the photos onto my Mac computer and sit and design a completely new brochure for the hotel, write completely new copy for it (I am blessed to be gifted in creative writing too), print it out (both sides), stick the two sides together and fold it in three just like how the hotel brochures were back then.
Then I would write a little note on my professional letterhead to the hotel manager and take it to the hotel along with my brochure mockup, nicely sealed in a Letter-size envelope, which I left at reception for the General Manager.
Those letters typically went something like this:
“Dear Mr/Mrs/Ms. X,
I noticed that your hotel’s brochure was a bit dated – (I was nice, not too harsh lol).
You have a lovely hotel property but I think that upgrading the design and text of your brochure would drive more interest and bookings going forward, so I invested the time to prepare a full mockup for you, so you can fully appreciate what an upgraded brochure looks like from my perspective.
If you like what you see, feel free to give me a call to discuss making it “real”.
When I ultimately got called in to meet with the hotel managers (as I always did), I was typically told what their reaction was when they first opened the envelope and took out the brochure mockup. It was typically something like “Wow, this is our hotel???”
Typically, I would be asked only two questions at that meeting – “How much will this cost us? And Where do I sign?” Those were the good old days but the principle of putting in the work first, investing in the prospective client’s ability to “SEE the better solution intimately before him or her” has always stayed with me… it’s a “Give really meaningful value first” principle and I still practice that principle to this day.
Have there been any mentors or role models who have played a significant role in your personal growth journey? If so, how have they influenced your approach to entrepreneurship?
Discipline in working on tasks was modeled by both of my parents growing up, which also included the importance of “optimal preparation”, ensuring you have the right tools for the job or the right ingredients. I never once saw my father struggling to clean up our back and front yards with tools that were not right for the task or not sharpened well enough to do the work efficiently. The same applied to watching and helping my mother prepare meals and watching her do her intricate craftwork creations.
Beyond that, playing Chess trained my mind to think “Strategically & Fluidly” – viewing all available resources with their varying characteristics/strengths “together” and understanding how they can be applied effectively OVER TIME – seeing beyond the present moment, to applying them progressively and sequentially at the right time in the right sequence as circumstances develop, but also being able to adapt and recalculate the strategy, as the other party or parties make their own “moves”.
Then, reading the book “Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You’ve Got” by Jay Abraham, taught me how to apply that “fluid strategic thinking” beyond the chessboard, to personal life and most compelling for me, to Business development as well. In business, what you “know/understand” is infinitely more valuable than what “physical” assets you “have”, even cash.
Still, the greatest mentorship value I have ever obtained comes from God, because only Him, through my study of His word in another book, the Bible, continues to provide me with the “divine wisdom” on EXACTLY HOW to use whatever knowledge and understanding I have acquired, to create vastly superior business value propositions and to understand exactly where and how to deploy them, in order to avoid wasting unnecessary time and financial resources “barking up the wrong trees”.
How has the support and involvement of your family influenced your entrepreneurial endeavors, and how do you strike a balance between your ambitious ventures and spending meaningful time with your loved ones?
Support from my parents has been positive toward my entrepreneurial inclination and endeavors. Initial financial support to obtain equipment was also provided. At this stage today, my Dad has passed and my mother and older sibling are in a nursing home, where I am able to visit them and spend time with them when I’m here on my “home island” and not traveling.
My closest family member is my only child, my daughter who lives and works in another country. We talk frequently via FaceTime and see each other at least once a year – she comes to me or I go to her. So there is a good balance between my ambitious ventures and my family life. I intend to maintain that balance.
SMARTR aims to accelerate the growth and progress of tech startups, non-profits, and corporations working on solutions for sustainability transformation. What specific strategies or programs does SMARTR implement to support and catalyze the growth of these organizations?
The primary specific strategy and program is our Caribbean-focused, Globally-relevant Sustainability Transformation & Economic Development INITIATIVE (CT-X™/Caribben TRAVEL Xperience!™) , which, by applying a strategic business development perspective, is being executed via the launch of the world’s first and only “Sustainable Travel & Lifestyle Club”, a “For Profit” Tech Startup company. Multiple stakeholders entities will “plug in” to the CT-X™ Initiative and this will accelerate their growth and progress. CT-X™ is the “business equivalent” of the International Space Station, a multinational collaboration, where various international entities can “DOCK” with the space station to both “deliver” and “extract” meaningful value.
The global standard when it comes to major social, economic and environmental development/impact “initiatives”, is that such initiatives are conceived, planned, and executed by either Governments or by NGOs, essentially, by “Non-Profit” entities that are not managed by people who think and execute from a strategic “business development” perspective.
So while economic development initiatives created by such non-profit entities can have varying degrees of impact on the target communities, the initiatives are not self-financing nor self-sustaining, meaning that they are not premised on a model of major revenue generation and self-funded expansion, instead depending on the deployment of finite but MAJOR allocated development funds from donor agencies and governments. So for the impact to be “sustainable” (delivering impact long term), it requires a continual series of donations of significant funds, which, in any global economic downturn, is drastically reduced, curtailing such initiatives.
Most importantly, such “non-profit-driven” economic development initiatives do not and cannot attract and mobilize billions of everyday global citizens to actively participate in such initiatives ON A DAILY BASIS. Why? Because those non-profit initiatives are not based on directly and fully engaging the SINGLE MOST POWERFUL CATALYST for positive, transformational change there is on planet earth, that being the everyday citizens of every country.
That narrow, non-profit-style thinking about the problem and possible solution, with a focus on government agencies, various charities/non-profit partners, and various funding entities as the ideal and “PRIMARY/KEY ACTORS & FOCUS” of any solution they create, is the “Achilles’ heel” weakness of virtually every non-profit driven sustainability transformation and/or economic development “initiative/program”. Do those non-profit programs and initiatives make a difference and should they be supported? ABSOLUTELY, but we ought to understand that the true and full potential of what could be achieved by those non-profit-led initiatives, will never be achieved under the inherently “non-profit-based” thinking and execution models and processes they use.
Yes, these statements above will likely upset some people who are involved in such non-profit initiatives. Yet, my goal is not to disrespect them; my goal is simply to “shake up” their thinking and encourage them to “do things differently” thus empowering them to extract 10+ times more impact from their initiatives, simply for example, by setting up for-profit subsidiary entities staffed with “FOR-PROFIT-MINDED” business specialists, to weigh in on the design of their initiatives and to LEAD execution of the initiatives.
By stark contrast, SMARTR’s CT-X™ “Sustainability Transformation and Economic Development INITIATIVE, is being executed under the operations model of a legitimate Tech Startup in the global TRAVEL industry, the #1 (largest) industry in the entire world in terms of Employment and the #5 industry in terms of Market Value, which hit $11.1Trillion in 2022 and is expected to reach $16.9Trillion by 2030. CT-X™, therefore, is the demonstration of a “CONSUMER/CITIZEN-FIRST” strategic BUSINESS development thought process, applied to a social, economic, and environmental IMPACT initiative, because Travel is also the #1 most COMPELLING consumer-facing industry in terms of the value it delivers to global citizens.
Do you see the difference in approach to initiative development? By “centering/anchoring” the industry focus to Travel, we tap into the most powerful PSYCHOLOGICAL and EMOTIONAL “commercial engagement trigger” there is for a human being – the idea of traveling to new and exciting places and enjoying thrilling new “EXPERIENCES” that make them feel “fully alive”. Different people will tell you they are passionate or even fanatical about various things – sports, music, fashion, movies, and many other things, but what is the ONE thing they all have in common? A love for the opportunity to jump on a plane and travel to exciting new places with new cultural experiences to explore and immerse themselves in.
Our initiative, therefore, immediately captures the hearts and minds of the global collective citizens who are the real drivers of all change (businesses and non-profits are all run by individual citizens) and the citizens are the ones who for the most part, determine who gets the privilege of forming and running the national government. The attraction for these billions of global citizens regarding our TravelTech-based startup and initiative is the opportunity it gives them to not just be “passive bystanders” and “moderately-engaged supporters” of the traditional types of initiatives, but rather, to be PASSIONATELY involved on a DAILY basis, as being “key contributors” to the development and execution of what is arguably the most “potent” collaborative solution to planet earth’s biggest Social, Economic and Environmental problems/challenges.
“How can I make such a bold claim about the potential of our “for-profit-based CT-X™ Initiative?”
Here’s why:
I have seen hundreds of different NGO-conceived and led initiatives over the years focused on sustainability transformation and economic development. What I have not seen, is such an initiative that demonstrates a clear and full understanding of the “CORE/UNDERLYING” problem which the planet Earth and its people face, with respect to sustainability transformation and economic development. The initiatives will all talk passionately about the problem being “Climate Change”, or “Global Warming”, “Greed”, “Corruption” or any myriad of other things that in reality, are nothing more than the “SYMPTOMS” of the real problem. That real problem is unequivocally, a “Human Behavior Change” problem. The daily “Behavior” of every human on earth, is either going to be “more PRO-Sustainability” or “more ANTI-Sustainablity”. Right now, it is largely skewed on the side of “more ANTI-Sustainablity”.
If you have a Human Behavior Change problem, your laser-sharp PRIORITY FOCUS should not be on 100-page “Reports”, high-level talks with government officials and Fortune 500 C-Suite executives, or creating new grant schemes for businesses to “apply to”, or holding fancy sustainability and economic development conferences and so on. No, your laser-sharp priority focus should be on two things:
1) How to powerfully ATTRACT the ATTENTION and POSITIVE SENTIMENT of the Billions of global citizens on earth with an internet connection, with respect to your worthy impact objective/plan… and
2) How to powerfully INSPIRE and INCENTIVIZE them to significantly CHANGE THEIR “ANTI-SUSTAINABILITY” Social, Economic, and Environmental BEHAVIORS to ProSustainability behaviors, in a way and at a scale that as a result, will greatly motivate ALL other stakeholder groups (companies, charities, colleges, etc) to do likewise – thus driving “Hyper Accelerated” Sustainability Transformation and more equitable Economic Development globally, thereby greatly mitigating the “problem symptoms” I referenced in the preceding text.
So how does CT-X™ demonstrate this optimal laser sharp priority focus? We demonstrate it first by the strategic focus on Travel… and most importantly, also by designing a completely new type of Travel-Centered Loyalty Program for the said billions of global consumers and ultimately, for Planet Earth. The CT-X™ “Sustainability Ca$hBack™ Loyalty Program” is the first and ONLY loyalty program in the world, which economically empowers global citizens by helping them to build an ownership portfolio of premium digital and physical CT-X™ “Property Assets”, without ever having to spend a single cent of their hard-earned FIAT money to directly purchase the said assets.
These CT-X™ property assets are all “Revenue-Generating” assets, which can legitimately put more cash in a consumer’s bank account annually than they spent on their travel for the year. This is by “strategic economic development design”, not by chance.
This is the complete OPPOSITE of what traditional loyalty programs do, as the goal of traditional business loyalty programs, is to get as much money as possible OUT of the consumers’ bank accounts, not to put major sums of money INTO consumers’ bank accounts. So once global consumers recognize our very radically different and empowering loyalty program value proposition, how “attracted” to it do you imagine they would likely be?
As a Founder and CEO, what strategies or practices have you implemented to continually foster personal growth within yourself and your team?
For me, it begins with reading the Bible or listening to it preached online DAILY. The amount of wisdom I obtain from doing this daily exceeds the value I derive from eating three meals a day. The growth in my understanding of possibility and how to unlock it; the growth in my focusing more on giving than receiving; my focus more on listening than being hasty to speak, all of these growth attributes come from putting God first and tapping into His wisdom. I deliberately choose “core” team members who are like-minded in this regard, which fosters mutual harmony both in our work and in our social engagement with each other.
With the unique operational model of SMARTR as both a venture capital management firm and a joint venture-based commercial business consortium, what challenges have you encountered, and how have you overcome them to drive growth and progress?
It is important to understand that any radically new approach will often be rejected; just look to all of the brilliant inventions like the light bulb, the airplane, and many others. Furthermore, all great inventions (products and processes) had to be refined over time, until they reach a minimally viable product/process (MVP) level that forms a foundation for widespread success.
What we do at SMARTR is no different and we have spent the last 7 years refining our strategic business development model leveraging the wisdom of God. We are now at a place where “scaling” is viable.
When people hear Venture Capital, they think only of the investment of “Money”. The meaning of venture capital is not the traditional meaning; for us, venture capital is preceded by the word “JOINT”. So in our world, Joint Venture Capital includes the investment of “money capital”, but also of other types of “capital”, such as Capacity capital (ex. unused warehouse), Relational capital (ex. unleveraged contacts), and many other types of.
What’s more, our focus on the various types of capital is based on structuring “JOINT VENTURE” investment transactions among two and more parties, where each party contributes whatever type of “capital” they are able to contribute/invest, with rights to a mutually-agreed commensurate share of the financial upside which the target project/venture generates.
So the primary challenge has been getting business owners to “see and think” differently when they encounter our model because they are so HARD-WIRED to think that they need to give up more than 50% of the equity of their company to cash capital investors over the first 5-10 years, in order to build a viable business and have a “meaningful” exit.
However, the right people do “get it” eventually and they become like “seeds” of changed thinking that perpetuate bit by bit, the SMARTR approach to strategic business development and investment for venture building. Yes, I admit it, that was most definitely a deliberate play on our company name “SMARTR” – which itself was a strategic company naming choice/decision.
How do you navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of fintech, blockchain, and web3 technologies to stay at the forefront of innovation and drive the growth of SMARTR’s portfolio companies?
I’ve been on LinkedIn for about a decade now and it continues to keep me on the pulse of changing global trends in technologies, especially fintech, blockchain, and web3. I am also subscribed to two newsletters in particular which I find more rich in choice of content and analysis.
That said, I don’t just swallow the opinions presented in the analysis “as is”. I always pass them through the “filter” of God’s divine wisdom, so that I am able to extract what is most applicable for my journey at the intersection of fintech, blockchain, and web3, hand in hand with the startups and partner companies we work with.
Critics might argue that the success of SMARTR’s initiatives heavily relies on external factors, such as government regulations, market conditions, or investor sentiment. How do you mitigate these external risks and ensure that your business growth is not overly dependent on factors beyond your control?
That is quite easy, actually. Such risks are strongly mitigated “by strategic design” up front. We make sure that we understand the goals and challenges of ALL relevant stakeholder groups to whatever we are undertaking and then proactively develop a Value Proposition for them that is “XTRAORDINARY”.
Let’s say for example, that our company is planning to start issuing security tokens to US investors. Our approach to this is not going to be that of most other companies in the fintech, blockchain, and web3 space. Their approach is to hire legal attorneys to advise them and guide their plans etc. and to file the requisite documents with the SEC. Then they go about their security token issuance and hope that all will be well and that the SEC never comes knocking on their door with a subpoena for documentation, followed by legal action. If such subpoena and legal action do come, then they would start scrambling to figure out how to deal with it, spend a fortune on more legal opinions, and look to scrub a few years of email and chat communications that could work potentially against them if seen by the SEC and so on. That sounds quite normal, I suppose.
Our approach, however, in addition to the above legal advisory steps, would likely be to build out a “Regulatory Oversight Portal” (ROP) for my project from day one, once I took the decision to move ahead and work on a security token issuance. With the full knowledge and consent of all involved partners, all related communications and documentation would be consistently added to the ROP on a weekly basis at a minimum, including text messages, emails, and recorded video conference calls. If a potential partner objects, we’d find a new partner who is fine with our “proactive” approach.
BEFORE the SEC even comes knocking, we would formally deliver to the SEC’s relevant officers, communication that provides the SEC with access to the ROP, whereby they can review all of the thought processes, legal advice, and discussions leading up to our decision to issue a security token and why we are going about it the way we are.
That communication would let the SEC team know that we are providing this ROP to give them the opportunity to challenge the legality of any aspect of what we are doing, in the “preemptive best interest” of the investor public, both accredited and non-accredited.
Should a case ultimately be brought to the courts, we have a clear demonstration of intent to fully comply with the securities laws to the best of our ability and available legal counsel, plus an undeniable demonstration of making ALL relevant data pertaining to our security token issuance process available “ON-DEMAND” to the requisite regulatory authorities.
In my opinion, my company would fare far more positively for taking this proactive mitigative approach to a “potential” threat of regulatory sanction. This is the application of our proprietary “XVP™” principle of strategic business development – “Xtraordinary Value PropositionTM”. We create powerful XVPs™ to drive stronger performance in sales and client acquisition, but they are equally relevant to the goal of “risk mitigation”, of things like “regulatory uncertainty”, “market conditions, or investor sentiment”.
With the goal of attracting hundreds of millions of Millennial and GenZ travelers to participate in sustainability transformation efforts, how do you plan to engage and motivate this target audience effectively? Skeptics might question the feasibility and scalability of such an ambitious endeavor. How do you respond to those who doubt the reach and impact of your initiatives?
My response is simple.
First, “skepticism” is a valuable sentiment, one that can avert dangers and disasters.
“Nevertheless, I’d invite all skeptics about my company’s project, to take the time to fully examine the “Xtraordinary Value Proposition™” and “OVERALL” symbiotic execution model we have created for the Millennial, GenZ, AND Gen X and Boomer travelers as well, for they are not excluded. If the critic is not someone who is keenly interested in exciting travel or in personal economic growth or in sustainability transformation, they would not be excited by what they see when they look “under the hood” of our CT-X™ venture.
No doubt, such skeptics would continue to be a critic and that’s fine. In that case, I’d tell them to take a comfortable seat, wait until 2030 arrives and then declare “I told you so”, if they see then that we have not come close to “attracting AND engaging hundreds of millions of Millennial and GenZ travelers to participate in our sustainability transformation efforts”.
For people like myself and other innovators, the questions and criticism of skeptics are welcomed, as they do nothing but add fuel to the fire of determination that burns deep inside our spirits, especially for those of us who choose to believe that “with God, all things are possible”.
As an entrepreneur with multiple ventures and projects, how do you manage your time and resources effectively? Critics argue that spreading yourself too thin could lead to diluted focus and subpar results. How do you ensure that each venture receives the attention and dedication it requires for sustained growth?
By only getting involved with ventures that are “symbiotic” to/“aligned” with the overarching mission and vision of SMARTR, as well as through delegation. There are MILLIONS of ants in an ant colony and THOUSANDS of bees in a large hive. The “Queen” of those colonies does not “spread themselves too thin”, because each ant/bee (“venture”) is aligned with the overall colony’s mission and works within that alignment (specific contributing area) for the greater good of all, not just for themselves.
Again, this is exactly the SMARTR approach and model to strategic business development, which mirrors “nature” and which mirrors divine wisdom.
Looking ahead, what are your key priorities and growth strategies for SMARTR in the coming years? Are there any new initiatives or partnerships on the horizon that you are particularly excited about?
Key priorities for the next 7 years to 2030, are all around bringing 10 different stakeholder groups together to participate in the CT-X™ Initiative and Tech Startup venture, whereby each and every one of those stakeholder groups will be able to both deliver and extract very significant value for their participation as “strategic partners”. At the CENTER of it all are the global individual consumers – collectively, they are the “Queen” of the CT-X™ “business and lifestyle development colony” and it is going to be a blast to work with them to transform human lives, commercial businesses and non-profit organizations.
For the next 7 years, CT-X™ is the “initiative and partnerships” ecosystem we are most excited about. Every new stakeholder entity that joins the CT-X™ ecosystem represents a new initiative and partnership to be very excited about.
You see, “technically” speaking, both life and business are about one thing – VALUE – its creation and delivery/sharing. The more meaningful value a human shares with another human, the happier they are and the more the recipients of that value are both inspired and empowered to share, spreading that behavior of creating and delivering/sharing meaningful value to others. When a human creates meaningful value, they can’t help but want to share it with others, even if it means giving away the value as a gift.
The reason for that is that “psychologically” speaking, both life and business are built on one foundation – LOVE. It’s either love of self or love of someone else that motivates us to get up each morning and do whatever “value creation” it is we do; sure we want to make money to pay the bills and have a comfortable life, but underneath it all, is the undeniable “impetus” of LOVE.
And “LOVE”… is the one thing I couldn’t be more excited about, for all of humanity.
How can people find out more about SMARTR and connect with you?
They can connect with me on LinkedIn here: Robin Belle
They can learn more about SMARTR and learn more about our truly empowering CT-X™ Travel Tech Startup and Initiative.
Thanks so much, GreyJournal and Web3.news Team, for the opportunity to share my heart about SMARTR, CT-X™, and how the people of the world can come together and make life on Earth a better experience for all!
