Community is not a place

What a couple of weeks in Peru taught me about service, gratitude and the people we keep close.

I spent 14 days in Peru, and something in me has shifted.

It started in the doorways. You step into a shop here and, before you have looked at a single thing, someone looks up and smiles. It is a smile that says you are welcome, and that they are glad you came. Even though we look different, and don't speak their language.

I travel because I love it. I also travel because it lifts me out of my own circle and shows me what I have stopped seeing at home. This week, Peru has shown me what it means to serve another person, and I want to share it with every business owner I know.

Ayni: nothing given is ever lost

The Quechua people of the Andes live by a principle called ayni. It is usually translated as reciprocity, but it runs deeper than a fair trade. Ayni holds that life is a constant flow of giving and receiving, between people, and between people and Pachamama, the Mother Earth who feeds them. What you give comes back. What you receive, you honour.

I have felt it every time I handed over a few soles (dollars). A bottle of water. A piece of corn, in a land where corn has been treasured for thousands of years. Each time I was thanked as though I had done something that mattered.

To them, I had. That small sale helps feed a family, and they let you know it. Nobody measured my worth by the size of my spend. The thank you for a bottle of water carried the same warmth as it would for something ten times the price.

They meet you where you are

What has struck me most is the absence of judgement. Nobody sizes you up at the door. Nobody decides who you are before you have spoken, or what you ought to want, or how much you should spend.

There is an understanding here that everyone arrives carrying a story. Where you come from, what you have, what you have been through: none of it changes the welcome. You are treated with respect because you are a person standing in front of them, and that is enough.

The people offering that welcome seem content in their work. Serving someone is not a chore to get through. It carries dignity, and they want to do it. On the receiving end, you feel you belong to something far bigger than a transaction.

Ayllu: community is the people

The Andes have a word for that belonging too. An ayllu is the traditional Andean community: a web of families bound by kinship, shared work and what they owe one another. It is where ayni lives. An ayllu has its land, but what makes it an ayllu is the people and the care that moves between them.

I live in a small community, and I love it. But in a small place it is easy to believe that community is the place: the town, the valley, the familiar faces. We stop looking past our own circle.

Peru has taken me outside mine. A week among strangers, half a world from home, and I have felt held. Community is not the place. It is the people, and how they choose to treat each other.

What this asks of us as business owners

I keep turning these moments over and holding them up against my own businesses. They leave me with questions worth asking of any of us:

• Does every person who walks through your door feel wanted there, before they have spent a cent?

• Do you meet your customers where they are, or where you expect them to be?

• Is your thank you the same for the smallest sale as for the largest?

Do your people serve from contentment or from obligation? Customers feel the difference the moment they walk in.

None of this costs anything. A smile, respect and thanks are free. Yet in the chase for efficiency and the bigger sale, they are often the first things we let slip.

Ayni would say that is short-sighted. What you give your customers comes back, in loyalty, in word of mouth, in a community that wants you to do well.

Choose your circle

The last lesson is about who stands beside you. In an ayllu, nobody carries the load alone. People turn up for each other, knowing that one day they will need the same in return.

Your team, your partners, your advisers and your friends are your ayllu. Choose people who give as well as take. Choose people who meet others without judgement and who know how to say thank you. Make sure the right people are in your circle, and be that person in someone else's.

I will bring plenty home from this trip. What will stay with me longest is being thanked, from the heart, for buying a piece of corn.

Sulpayki, Peru. Thank you.