 Hi, I'm Chuck slaughter. I'm the founder of living goods and you'll see we share a lot of DNA with the with Debbie and no with Jordan Look at this picture What do you see? Do you see an image of need or do you see an image of opportunity? Millions of people in emerging markets are underemployed millions of young people are coming into the job market every day What we need now. I think more than anything is a democratization of opportunity Families like this Struggle every day to put food on the table to save for school fees and to put aside a little money for those inevitable crises And not only do they have a challenge in making a livelihood, but in their homes every day They suffer from challenges like having clean simple efficient light that they can use to study and to work they suffer from choking indoor air pollution from diseased water and From a diet low in nutrients that's blocking the potential from their children to grow healthy and strong and thrive in school But I'm an optimist what I see in this room and what I've seen in the last ten years is a wave of creative Invention that has led to a whole range of new products and services that improve the lives of the poor Improving their life and saving money clean cook stoves solar lights simple water filters and nutrient rich fortified foods But these products aren't getting to have all the people who need them Are they and the challenge is that they're choked by these highly fragmented almost perfectly atomized Retail and distribution landscapes where you have millions of mom-and-pop shops who lack buying power who lack branding power Who an act lack access to finance? But again, I see opportunity this is one of our living goods agents Her name is a mean and she represents a new wave a new generation of empowered entrepreneurs who are tapping into four powerful forces One is microfinance another is mobile and mobile money Then there's the rise of social media and last but not least the power of the direct selling business model pioneered by Avon and Tupperware This is another living goods agent She is selling the exact products you just saw every day She's making a powerful living and making a powerful difference in the lives of her customers What she's doing was inspired by the Avon model which has started 150 years ago today That industry is a hundred and sixty billion dollar industry, and it's growing faster than the biggest biggest package good companies like Unilever Nestle and Procter and Gamble the direct selling industry is based on the power of human networks This is the most potent power in markets and societies. It what's it's what connects us all direct selling agents are more profitable than average Entrepreneurs they make more money They are lower risk to lenders and to franchise ores and the direct selling industry on average the publicly traded companies are earning over 15% EBITDA imagine the potential for these industries to get out of discretionary products and into products The customers really need add to the power direct selling that the uber connectivity and hyper efficiency of mobile Living-ins agents use their mobile phones every day to connect instantly with their customers at a distance saving time and money Two years ago before we implemented mobile. It took us two months to roll out a promotion now We can do it in 20 minutes in the early 2000s and PASA rolled out in in Kenya people were skeptical Ten years later a third of the economy runs through the impasse of platform And again living goods agents used us to pay Remotely every day saving them time and trouble that they can now reinvest into selling more earning more and making a bigger difference in the lives of their customers Microfinance not everyone knows this started as a simple NGO experiment a little fringe idea 30 years ago 30 years later a half a billion people Previously unbanked now have access to capital Living goods agents use microfinance every week to help sell products in simple weekly installments People in these markets are incredibly resourceful entrepreneurs put these four forces in their hands And they will create millions of high-impact high-profit jobs. This is what excites me Human networks. It's what we live for our human connections, right? How else do you explain the explosive growth of social media? Imagine what the next generation of entrepreneurs are going to do with Twitter and Facebook let alone the next billion dollars Startup that's sitting on the laptop of some 20 year old in the back of this room right now. I Am tremendously excited The woman in this picture grace she has a bright future you can see it on her face and the question I'm asking myself, and I'm asking this room is how can all of us tap into these powerful converging forces To drive the next generation of wealth creation and job creation