I enjoyed five months in Vilcabamba last year living on about $500 a month with one month in Cuenca, the arts capital of Ecuador. These are profiles of some old and new friends and a bit about this hidden treasure.

The sleepy little town of Vilcabamba in the southern part of Ecuador near the Peru border is waking up and attracting an increasing flow of visitors and new residents who have begun launching an eclectic array of new businesses.

Vilcabamba’s beautiful valley with its eternal spring has been the favorite of backpackers and a few ex-pats for years. But with so much economic uncertainty around the world, more and more Americans and visitors from other countries are finding places like Vilcabamba, with its beauty, great weather and low cost of living, an attractive possibility as a new home base. As the influx increases, Vilcabamba’s new entrepreneurs are offering visitors more and more reasons to stay.

Joe Simonetta is a good example. Joe came to Vilcabamba in June, 2005.  He happened to arrive at a time when a 700 acre ranch was being put up for sale and much to his surprise he made an offer that was accepted three days later. He returned to live full time a year later after selling his Sarasota, Florida home.  Today, Joe, who holds degrees in Business, Architecture and Divinity is overseeing the building of homes and a hotel and spa on his beautiful valley property with a river, Hacienda San Joaquin. Of one-hundred properties, forty remain available to prospective buyers. (www.vilcabambahomes.com)

Nathalie Duffau is a world traveler who arrived in Vilcabamba after two years living in Costa Rica. She left her native Paris in 1998 where she worked as a television journalist for a dozen years and moved to Miami Beach for eight years becoming a web master prior to moving to Costa Rica.

On the surface, her move seems highly unlikely. Nathalie traded in the glamour of the city of lights for Vilcabamba’s tranquility. After her arrival, she saw an unfilled opportunity to use her reporting expertise to provide Vilcabamba’s ex-pat community and the world with a window on local news and events. She launched Vilcabamba TV and to date, Nathalie has shot, edited and uploaded over 150 stories on life in the village that have been viewed over 60,000 times including two UFO sightings she recorded through a window in her home. (www.vilcabambatv.com)

Nick Vasey and Laura Ainscough arrived in Vilcabamba from Melbourne, Australia in August of 08 to help ex-pat Brian O’Leary and his wife Meredith Miller organize and manage their new Montesuenos Conference Center. Nick’s background includes finance, sales & marketing, and international hospitality management. Laura is a registered psychologist, a black belt in Aikido, qualified ESL Teacher, as well as being a gourmet vegetarian chef. Looking at the local real estate market, Nick saw that many ex-pats had run into trouble purchasing property and homes, and recently launched Vilcabamba’s first socially responsible real estate company (www.vrec.org).

Laura researched the local food scene, discovered a ready market for her delicious prepared dips, and founded Lola’s Fine Foods that now supplies the Vilcabamba community with healthy gourmet food choices and event catering.

Mike Adams, aka The Health Ranger, is an author, investigative journalist and a recent transplant from the U.S. His timely comments and articles on natural health and the economy are enjoyed by subscribers around the world. Several of his subscribers have joined him in living full time in Vilcabamba. Mike planted a garden that supplies him with all his healthy food and juices. He shares his excess crops shared with friends and the community. You can check out his daily news feed at naturalnews.com

Raul and his wife Isamar came to Vilcabamba from Mexico City and six months ago opened the newest restaurant success in town with their partner and advisor, American Mary Tredeau. Cafe Sambuca is an indoor/outdoor café with a fun menu that includes traditional dishes with Latin flavors as well as fresh juices and vegetarian and raw food selections that are served with the genuine warmth of the owners. They recently expanded into an adjacent space and now offer home made pizza with authentic Italian recipes supplied by their friend Rafaela and boxed and fresh made ice creams.

Brian O’Leary and his partner Meredith arrived in Vilcabamba in the summer of 2004 and bought a small home on a magnificent mountain with 360-degree views of the valleys and Andes. They began building their eclectic retreat center and bed and breakfast, Montesuenos in the autumn of 04 and hosted their first conference, The Phoenix Gathering in June 08, another on Crisis and Opportunity in January 09, with two upcoming conferences, the Frontier Science & Reincarnation workshop in May 09 and Environment, Energy, Economics, Education and Ecuador in August.

Monetsuenos offers overnight and long term stay options. To learn more about Brian, Meredith or their conference center’s upcoming conferences, visit montesuenos.org and brianoleary.info.

Peter and Deiter came to Vilcabamba like so many others before them and fell in love with the beauty and charm of the town. They purchased a beautiful mountain property with views of the Andes and the town below and began building their boutique hotel and hostel, Izhcayluma (izhcayluma.com), in October of 1998. The hotel opened in February of 2001, attracts backpackers and guests from around the world, and has become Vilcabamba’s most popular hotel. Guests and non-guests alike enjoy the million-dollar view restaurant, natural pool and bar.

Norrie Huddle and her partner Richard Wheeler arrived a few years ago and purchased a 300-acre river property they now call the Garden of Paradise Healing & Retreat Center
They built a beautiful adobe home and musical sound chamber and are currently completing an internet café with rental units for overnight guests. They planted bananas and vegetable gardens and are currently offering lots from $30,000-$150,000 to ex pats seeking an artistic and ecological community lifestyle.

Norrie is and author/interviewer , consultant, speaker, life coach whose books cover environmental, peace and social transformation themes.  She is the project’s general manager, videographer, multi-language communicator and workshop leader.

Richard is an artist, musician, Rolfer, paleontologist, and inventor who studied with Ida Rolf at The Esalen Institute in Big Sur and with his sister, was one of the founder’s of The Rolf Institute. Richard recently invented a new massage table that will be manufactured in Vilcabamba by some of the town’s excellent craftsmen. His roles on the project include website designer, photographer, structural integration practitioner, workshop leader, general artist, resource person and teacher. For more info on Norrie, Richard and their property visit gardenofparadise.net and http://web.mac.com/tarpitboss.

Susan Davis and her husband Walter arrived in Vilcabamba in 2006 and built a beautiful cathedral-like home for their gatherings with a breathtaking view of the Andes and the town center below.  Walter was a biodynamic dairy farmer on three continents including in Wisconson where he and Susan met.  Susan launched Investors’ Circle, a national network of social venture capital investors, in 1990 and has nine other effective networks of social investors in solar, institutional social investments, minority investments and micro-enterprise.   Walter’s mission is shifting our farming to biodynamics and Susan’s mission is greening our global economy.

In Vilcabamba, Susan and Walter are using Flow Funds (flowfunding.org) through Global Giving (GlobalGiving.com) to fund 10 local leaders who work without pay while using FlowFunds for their out-of-pocket expenses.   They are proud of this method of getting 100% of foreign money ‘to the ground’ without travel or expensive international consultants or administrators. Walter has purchased a nearby 1200-acre farm and plans to grow local organic medicinal herbs that can be exported, offering employment to local people.

Belgian, Aurelie Pinchart, owns and prepares meals at El Otro Lado, an intimate, mostly vegetarian restaurant where her loyal following finds great soups and daily specials on the square. Her eatery is located next door to Vilcanet, the town’s leading internet service provider owned and operated by friend and former husband, local entrepreneur Ivan Macanchi. Their wonderful daughter, Lolita, spends time between school, her father’s internet café and her mother’s restaurant.

What was once a collection of small local businesses is fast becoming an international center of entrepreneurship. For those with the desire to see how new business ideas can contribute to a community or who may have an idea for a business they might like to bring to Vilcabamba, you may want to consider a visit, enjoy a tour of the town and meet some of its colorful entrepreneurs who are bringing a new excitement and interesting new options to a beautiful, tranquil, and low cost of living destination. Who knows, you just might end up joining these entrepreneurs living in Vilcabamba and contributing to the local community.

For more on life in Vilcabamba, check out www.vilcabamba.org

Dave Pollard | April 2009 Ode Magazine

Dave Pollard

The economic news is the worst in at least a generation. What most people have done is cut personal spending, put off major purchases and try to pay off debts from the boom times. These are wise steps to take. But what should you be doing about your job in this economy? A recent report suggested working harder, updating your resumé and strengthening your networks. While these steps, too, are sensible, they’re steeped in “learned helplessness”—the perception that we have little or

no control over a situation due to repeated failed attempts to exercise such control.

This perception of helplessness is reinforced by our society for all sorts of reasons. Employers want their employees to be loyal and obedient; schools and universities teach us we have to find a job or career working for someone else. Government programs to “combat unemployment” generally entail giving money and tax breaks to corporations in the naive belief that this will “trickle down” to the rest of us. So, conditioned by learned helplessness, we perceive ourselves as passive consumers, passive citizens and passive employees. The key to overcoming learned helplessness is realizing that we aren’t helpless, that we have more control over our situations and destinies than we’ve been led to believe.

Entrepreneurship need not be stressful, risky, expensive, lonely, exhausting or require great skills, ideas or self-confidence—a perception that’s reinforced by the mainstream media. Right now, when the economy is falling apart, is the best possible time to start your own enterprise, and doing so could propel you into work that’s more responsible, sustainable and joyful than what you’re doing now.

I spent more than a quarter-century with Ernst & Young, the big accounting firm, where I discovered a small group of entrepreneurs (I call them “natural ­entrepreneurs”) who had found a better way to make a living. These natural entrepreneurs were resilient and recession-proof; their businesses thrived in good times and bad. They didn’t work that hard, and the people who worked for them never wanted to leave the company, even if they were offered more money elsewhere. They were responsive to their employees and customers and responsible to the places where they did business. They were sustainable both environmentally and economically. They were non-hierarchical, drawing on the wisdom of their employees, customers and community members to make decisions. And they didn’t need to grow bigger to succeed; they were content to grow better instead.

These natural entrepreneurs did six things differently from all the other stress-prone, boom-and-bust, struggling businesses that made up the majority of my clientele:

1. They had found their sweet spot, the work where their gifts, their passions and their purpose intersected.
2. They had found the right business partners, people who shared their purpose and whose gifts and passions complemented their own.
3. They did world-class research to identify real needs that weren’t being met by any other enterprise in the marketplace.
4. They used a rigorous, continuous process to invent and commercialize products and services that met those unmet needs.
5. Instead of planning for the future, they had learned how to improvise, to adapt easily to changes in the economy and demographics.
6. They acted with integrity, operating in a way that resonated with their values, and made principled decisions, not opportunistic ones, in the long-term interest of their partners, employees, customers and communities.

This is the formula that successful small enterprises have effectively followed since the time of artisans. And it still works.

If the idea of ending your learned helplessness appeals to you, you don’t have to quit your job to discover the work you were meant to do. The first three steps can be done in your spare time, evenings and weekends. Do them right, and by the time you’re ready to give notice, you’ll know you’ve got a winning idea, a winning team and the basis of a natural enterprise that will provide you with a lifetime of meaningful, joyful, recession-proof work.

Dave Pollard is the author of Finding the Sweet Spot: The Natural Entrepreneur’s Guide to Responsible, Sustainable, Joyful Work, published by Chelsea Green.

Listen to ZenBiz Radio Wednesday Feb. 11th at 11:00 a.m. PST to explore these topics…

“Embodied Intelligence in the Face of Chaos and Uncertainty”

It sometimes seems that no matter where you look, the world appears to be falling to pieces.  Financial markets have plummeted. People are losing their jobs. The environment is wracked by immense shifts. Yet some people know, in their bones, that despite the turmoil and disarray, opportunities abound for them.  How do you find your silver lining in this mess?

Join Allan and Bruce as they interview Dr. Susan Bernstein, an expert in optimizing “embodied intelligence” in the face of chaos and uncertainty. She’ll discuss the four forces of panic and how to avoid t hem.

Bruce turns “The Stewart Report” this week over to a topic that most people would really rather not think about: how close might our society be to collapse? Bruce will explore when the tipping point of collapse could be reached – and how listeners can take a good hard look at their own communities and determine whether they’d be a safe place to be in a collapsing society!

Check it out on ZenBiz Radio Wednesday Feb. 11th at 11:00 a.m. pst. on Voice America : http://www.modavox.com/VoiceAmericaBusiness/