Building an Empire - Philosophy of ECOBANK

in The Man Cave2 years ago (edited)

I would like to take a moment to give you guys a deeper dive into the ECOBANK model we are building, this has been the work of more than 10 years of my life, and I have been planning and building, observing and learning all the time. We have been growing our local network, seeing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats first hand. We have been 'putting in the work'.

And now its time to act.

1. We are building an empire, starting from this location.

This is the first important concept to understand - we are building a physical empire. It is not just that we want to make money, we are creating a 'value-adding empire' in the heart of the Andean mountains. At once this community can serve as an example in development, a refuge against 'SHTF' scenarios, and has the tropical potential to be a true utopian paradise if developed correctly.

We have chosen our main location, in the Northern Part of the Tolima Department of Colombia. Its a geographically isolated place known as a hideaway and refuge for thinkers and writers for more than a century. It is a dominant rural/agricultural area, the food and cost of living is inexpensive and high-quality. Cows are grass fed and much of the local crops from sugar cane to cassava are naturally organic. There is a lot of mountain spring water and plenty of rainfall.

And we are going to use all of this to our advantage on our path.

2. Sustainable development, defined by me.

Me, that's @ecoinstant. Here's the document I'm using as a resume, an 'about me', a curated list of almost 5 years of blogs. Make sure to 'view it as a post'.

I personally do not agree with a lot of main stream topics involving 'green', 'ESG' or 'climate change'. But I have dug into the study, literature and living on the ground and I have a model, a working model that is based on many different successes we have already seen around the world, and that I am sure will be used as a model to copy from in the future. The solutions exist, we just need to implement them.

Sustainable - as a word - we are using to refer to the harmony in three areas - environmental, social and economic.

Much progress has been made on the environmental front, my wife is working on the cutting edge of Ecological Restoration through her Master's degree program. Together we have proposed the concept of 'profitable ecological restoration'. Its the economic angle that gets forgotten so much.

Social, like environmental, has a lot of work and interesting solutions appearing, mostly related to decentralization. Basically we can't be robber barons, we need to make sure we create profits in a way that benefits the entire community, more on this in the Eco Red Bank section. Social issues are also proven to improve when economic conditions improve, so again, the most important thing to do when considering these new solutions, is how can we implement these good ideas profitably.

3. How value is created

Prices and Profits are economic concepts. Prices are a communication system, and profit is the result of creating more value than expended - literally 'free energy'. All energy comes from the sun. Think of a tiny seed that grows into a big tree, and produces thousands of seeds over its life time. If you plant a bean, a bean plant will give you hundreds of beans. Nature is 'profitable' by way of absorbing 'free' energy from the sun, the soil and the environment.

We can do this too, we can look around, make decisions, and create profits by well-thought out design and development. I love the agriculture examples, as I have been working for over a decade to develop multi-species agroforestry systems, but this concept is important for all businesses.

We will be implementing promising designs in profitable ways, and using these to create reinvestment feedback loops. We are already doing this in fact, but the creating of the Eco Development Bank SAS gives us the tool we need to expand at whatever rate we want to or need to. We are about to hit the quantum leap phase of this project by completing our Presale where you or anyone can get involved at the very lowest price of $1.10 USD per token.

What's the first step?

So where do we start? We have projects lined up for timber, essential oil extraction, dehydration of natural products, real estate sub dividing, waterfall rappeling, and a number of other great ideas. But there is something special about the resort/hotel - and that is having the infrastructure ready for investors to come here and visit. To see with their own eyes what we are doing.

This is key. Not every investor needs to come, but all investors need to be able to come, this is how transparency works. I can tell you all about what I am doing, I can take pictures and instruct my team to post updates, but when the first HIVEr comes down to visit us, I know that this thing is going to take off in a big way.

We are chosing hotel and resort infrastructure as our first step to immediately make this fund into a 'membership club', which are estimated to have other benefits around governance. If you know right where we live and work its going to be easier to trust us.

ECO RED BANK

The ECOREDBANK is really a social program, 'red' in spanish means 'network'. We are deeply integrated into the growing but underdeveloped tourist network in the north of Tolima. I personally have been elected to the local Tourism board as a representative of the Tour Operators, my wife is the representative of the Registered Tour guides.

There is an upcoming post from our very own @gestorsocial talking about the current local conditions regarding tourism, but until that is published (soon), suffice it to say - we have a plan to address much of what is currently ailing the region.

Our 'network' bank project is identifying and connecting the current available tourist offerings locally - we will be putting together packages and selling packages to people who want to visit the region. Not only will we be making a profit, but we will be helping local entrepreneurs gain more customers and build their own businesses. Take a look at some of the posts on QuintaEsencia Blog to see reports from some of the current local tourist attractions.

I am hoping to bring a group of my own family members down here in early 2023 - we will be putting together a package just for them. And I hope that it won't take even that long to get some Hive member or other investor down here to check out the reality on the ground, stay with us, eat great local food, party with us, and learn all about what we are doing.

What's next?

From here, we will have decisions to make. We need to get our new hotel up and running, I will have a post hopefully this week or next on all the juicy details of what we are planning to buy.

We will look at positioning the hotel into the digital domain and expanding sales.

And we will always have an eye to start our build out of our finalized 8.2 hectares of wonderful land.

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This might be a good time to mention, this is a fund project. At any time we can make the decision to sell some assets and buy something else. Like that little tail of green on the map, along the road side, that might be a potential tiny piece we could sell at nice 1 profit for its great positioning along the main road.

Additionally, with the hotel we are buying into, after working with it and building it up, the time may come when it makes more sense to sell, and keep building somewhere else, taking our lessons and experience with us.

But in general, we are looking for cashflow producing assets to hold and take care of so that they can continue to develop profits - environmental, social and economic profits.

Any Questions?

Please continue to leave your questions, we are still selling tokens and I am going to shortly be doing a AMA - fill me up with great questions! I am doing my best to respond to every question in the comments as well. I appreciate your enthusiasm, but comments without valid observations or questions will not get a full vote from me.

This looks like a great project and I think it will do well!

Yeah... thanks. Me too.

Freedom and Friendship

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Awesome!!! I'm excited to see this post, and the last one from Saturday, starting to explain the details of this project. And yes, I do have a thousand questions, but I don't want to run your door down with them. ;-)

The first ones have to do with the investment and the token. I understand that the ECOBANK token is going to represent our investment in the project, and it sounds great that it will never be sold for less than the pre-sale price. But other than that, is there going to be a specific utility for it? Can it be traded for any goods or services related to the project? I remember you also mentioned dividends in one of your replies (to your previous post). How much is that going to be, how frequently, and for which tiers of investors? --- Okay, I'll be waiting patiently for your AMA, or any future posts going into these details.

My other questions have to do more with the roadmap of the business. What are the next steps, and how are they leading into the subsequent ones? And of course this opens up a whole can-o-worms of other questions, ranging from the biodiversity of the local ecosystem, to the numbers and demographics of visitors to the region, and not lastly the type of buildings and other infrastructure you want to implement. To be completely honest, I believe the best way to get a satisfactory answer to all these questions would be by becoming that "first HIVEr" you mentioned to visit your site. I'm not sure how and when, but I will see how I can squeeze in a trip to Colombia.

There is utility in a dividend stock, there is utility in the ability to get discounts, there is utility in commissions.

And we can always create more utility. For example, spend/burn 1 ECOBANK token to receive a discount for 1 night as if you were a top tier member.

I am writing up a new post right now as a follow up to this one.

I can't wait until you come! I have a place for you to stay!!!

Este es un gran proyecto, agradecemos su particiapción y los invitamos a invertir en el proyecto Ecoredbank.

It's nice to finally see things take off. Are you still going ahead with buying that existing hotel to get started or will you be focusing on your current hotel that you are building?

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

I am negotiating the deal right now. Its very likely we will buy in, I see it as a promising opportunity that puts us at least 1 year ahead.

This is awesome :)

I like the idea of building an empire! I hope to be able to check it out personally sometime soon!

After we buy the operating hotel, do you have any idea how long we expect to start building the new one?

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

That's going to depend on many factors. We are already clearing the land and creating paths, should have an update about the land and what we've been doing down there wednesday/thursday.

Cool! I'll check it out then

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

How is the presale going? How many tokens are left/sales needed? What time frame are we looking at for tokens to be released? Also I'm really excited for this and want to try and buy some more tokens

June 3rd presale officially ends, tokens released soon after.

Right now we officially have sold 16k usd, and I'm chatting up more people daily.

Awesome, thank you. What is the USD target goal from the presale in order to get this thing going?

Target was 125k, but I have a few options now moving forward and we are able to start no matter how many we sell.

Link map to google maps

Is the token launching on Hive Engine or Honeycomb platform? Hive Engine is more expensive but more set it and forget it. Honeycomb while cheaper seems to be more work to setup initially since you need a community to operate nodes for the token.

I haven't heard of honeycomb or seen any documentation - do you have a link?

I have already registered the ECOBANK token on hive-engine. The market will be ready on leodex.io/market/ECOBANK as soon as the tokens are sent out (after the presale closes on June 3rd).

It is coded by @disregardfiat and is located at https://github.com/disregardfiat/honeycomb.git and an article https://peakd.com/hive/@disregardfiat/honeycomb-overview-and-set-up-guide

It is used currently to run DLUX, SPK Network, and Ragnarök tokens.

Ah so thats what they are calling it! Thank you for these links I will follow up.

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