Busier Than a One-Armed Paper Hanger

Monday, October 17, 2011
Rich Tapestry of Current Learners, Graduates, Visitors, and Visiting Execs

I was a bit worried when at 6:05 the visitors outnumbered the learners in the class. Eventually, a good number of the class arrived. They heard encouraging words from Jacques and Hamim (Cohort 2 Football Academy) about life after graduation. Then Sandrali (Cohort 2) told them that the program changed him from a technician working “in” his business (he is a famous architect in Rwanda) to an entrepreneur working “on” his business. The class was encouraged to hear that the idea works, since it is what Jason and I have been telling them for weeks. They were also honored to be able to share the BDC affiliation with someone whom they respected so highly.

Ntense, a Nigerian businessman who is ICCC director for Africa, happened to be in town. He gave an impassioned charge to the class to rise up and be the leaders who develop Africa.

Robert, Executive Director of Churches Together and soon-to-be BDC licensee, shared his heart about how God called him to work in Africa as a result of a visit to an orphanage with AIDS-infected children in S. Africa. He preached a great mini-sermon.

Ntense and Robert are only here for one night, so I allocated them more time than the Chick Fil-A operators who are here all week. Mark and Brandon gave short introductions that will lead to further one-on-one consulting meetings.

Sunday, October 16, 2011
Busier Than a One-Armed Paper Hanger

Expecting to eat breakfast by myself, imagine my shock to hear Brandon call my name. I was planning to meet Mark & Brandon (Chick Fil-A Operators) at the airport tonight. I had the day wrong, and they had to get a taxi to Solace. Not a good first impression. Fortunately, Mark had been here before. I arranged for Bernard (taxi man) to take them to the Genocide Memorial and a tour of town.

The afternoon schedule felt like something you would see on a sit-com. Pascal (Cohort 2) stopped by to introduce me to his fiancé. We had a very nice visit. Then Jean Pierre (Cohort 3) came to discuss his insurance company project. As we were talking, Dale Fenwick (Regent MBA and visiting exec to Rwanda) called on Skype. That was providential timing since Dale, an insurance expert who was here a few weeks ago, is researching some international connections for the project.

As I was praying with Jean Pierre about a difficult issue in the project, Patrice (Cohort 1) called to say that he was waiting in the dining room of Solace. Patrice came to sell me on giving a BDC scholarship to the winner of his Africa Innovation Prize for high school entrepreneurs. I thought they would be too young, but he said they would be 19-20, so I agreed. Seemed like a win-win-win. We support one of our graduates, we help a young Rwandan entrepreneur, and the BDC gets some publicity.

Before I finished with Patrice, Alphonse (Cohort 3) arrived for help with the financial calculations for the business he is working on in the program. I asked him to gather his thoughts while I greeted Jacques and Hamim (Cohort 2) who were there for help with their Football (soccer) Academy.

Now I was overwhelmed. Fortunately, the Chick Fil-A guys had returned from their touring. I rushed up to their rooms and asked them to work with Alphonse on his Profit and Loss Statement. They jumped right in and did a great job. They really know how to do P & L’s. And it was a chicken business! Imagine that.

I sat down for a soda with Jacques and Hamim. They have registered their football academy as a non-profit and they are looking for help in many areas—funds, equipment, and a character curriculum so they can build winners in football and winners in life. I connected them to Oscar Benitez (Regent MBA in Guatemala) who is running a national program to develop character in youth through soccer. He is glad to help. I also volunteered to bring an extra suitcase with soccer jerseys that a Canadian has collected for them. Shipping to the U.S. is far cheaper than to Rwanda. We had a good discussion about long-term strategy.

Quick dinner and then off to pick up Robert, head of a non-profit that is considering licensing the BDC concept in Uganda or South Africa. Fortunately, it was the correct day, and we picked him up with no trouble.

Why Have We Been So Successful?

Thursday 9/15

Had an early morning meeting with the official who serves as our liaison at the Rwanda Development Board.  RDB is the government department that is charged with business and economic development.   We are working together to put on a customer service seminar in October.  We also discussed our graduation ceremony and other matters.  The meeting went well.

Our visiting executives are busy with mentoring meetings morning and afternoon.  We had a nice lunch meeting at Shokola, a safari themed café in downtown Kigali.  The Shultz's and I head back to meet learners and Dale remains downtown for a mentoring meeting with a graduate who is also a banker. 

People ask us how we have been able to attract such high potential entrepreneurs to our program. 

     1. God’s blessing. 

     2. Effective Approaches to Marketing. One of these is Open House.  Each Thursday evening when class is in session we have Open House – this is an opportunity for the entrepreneurs to invite their friends.  The turn out tonight was great as we had 15 open house guests, all of which seemed very interested in our training.  I talked with them during our break, give them a couple of brochures and we will follow up on them by email and phone calls.

Friday 9/16

Got out bright and early to visit several large local businesses. We are inviting them to our Customer Service and Leadership training in October.  The training is for the top leaders of the top companies in Rwanda.  The response has been encouraging.  There seems to be a real hunger for this kind of training here, and I know that this seminar will be great.

It is a shame I will miss it.  Dr. Mulford and I tag team as facilitators for our training here and it’s his turn in October.  I am excited by the prospect of training other facilitators, however.  I see a day in the future when we will have a great pool of people who do what we do.  This will allow us to expand this program beyond Rwanda – 100 BDCs around the world. 

I am encouraged by how well our VEs are doing with facilitation.  All our VEs this week are also facilitators in training.  90% of the class was led by Dale Fenwick tonight.  Good stuff – SWOT, the 4Ps, etc.

Saturday 9/17

We had a special Open House in our offices today from 9-12 AM for our graduates.  It was great seeing them, and our little office was a beehive of energy.  From the beginning we have wanted to find eMentors for our graduates.  Several are asking for mentors now.  I think of Théoneste in particular.  His business is creating online database driven applications for the B2B market.  His most successful product is a SAS for Rwandan schools.   He would love to have a mentor with some background in IT and web technology.  I just know that the Lord has someone who would be willing to email and occasionally Skype with Théoneste. 

After visiting with Graduates we went to Donatien’ s (our Director here) house for lunch.  What a great day!

Visiting Executives Make Huge Impact!

Tuesday 9/13

I spent the morning doing facilitator training with visiting executives Michael and Janet Shultz from Australia. The gateway into the Rwanda Business Development Center is a 14-week entrepreneurship training program that uses an action-based learning model. As such, the content in the training is presented in a discussion format rather than through lecture. Our facilitators (we prefer this title to “instructors”) learn how to create a learning environment where they can draw the right conclusions out of the learners. We want the members of the cohort to discover the learning objectives rather than merely have a facilitator tell them. This approach becomes second nature with time, but often feels awkward at first.

The training tonight focused on marketing research. The following is an example of how we approach the subject: The facilitator asks the entrepreneurs a question, in this case "Why is research important?" Heor she then captures some of the most promising answers on a whiteboard. A follow up question could be, "What kinds of things should an entrepreneur research?" The facilitator has a diagram in mind: a stick figure entrepreneur with a couple of thought bubbles. As the learners call out things that should be researched the facilitator begins organizing them in one or the other bubble. The facilitator knows that all the good answers will fall under one of three categories: customer, industry or economic trends. Through a series of leading questions and clarifying questions the facilitator helps the class build a diagram that essentially shows – the entrepreneur must conduct research to be aware of what is happening in his or her industry, to know his or her customer and to understand the larger trends that are impacting both (above the bubbles). This class discussion would then be followed by a small group discussion where we ask the entrepreneurs to analyze their own business concept and identify areas they need to do more research in light of this diagram.

Wednesday 9/14

Today we had a working lunch focused on an insurance business startup that some of our graduates, as well as current learners are working on. Visiting executive Dale Fenwick, who works in the insurance industry, has been able to help them think through their business model and their approach to capitalization and come up with some out of the box approaches that could lessen their capitalization burden and help them with speed to market.

Visiting executives have a huge impact on our entrepreneurs, through their expertise (depth) and their general business experience (breadth). The payoff for VEs is that helping in this way is extremely gratifying and often downright fun. Furthermore, this coaching/mentoring environment provides ample opportunities for VEs to have meaningful conversations, share testimonies of God’s goodness and pray with the entrepreneurs. As I write this I am thinking of all the Christian business people who could come for a week or two and bless the socks off this nation by just spending time with entrepreneurs and sharing their real world business experience.

Class tonight is focused on segmentation, targeting and positioning. I am looking forward to this, but missing family. Especially my son Mark who turns 11 today. Happy Birthday Mark!

The Role of Partnership in Poverty Eradication: A Myth or Reality?

by Dr. Jeremiah Koshal
Research Fellow, Regent Center for Entrepreneurship

Studies have attempted to identify the correlates linked to poverty mobility. People move out of poverty because they have significantly better endowments in terms of land and livestock, more educated heads of household, and have better roads and better rainfall. In other words, those moving out of poverty tend to be able to rely on good endowments in terms of assets such as land and livestock, human capital, and infrastructure. While factors such as these allow people to move out of poverty, shocks and risk make and keep them poor (Narayan & Petesch, 2007).

Most poor countries do not attract a larger capital inflow because of perceived high risk of investment. One useful indicator of investor perceptions of risk is a survey done by the magazine Institutional Investor that scores the perceived risk for each country on a scale of 1 to 100, 100 being the maximum safety appropriate for investment while 1 is the least safety appropriate. Risk ratings such as this show up as significant in statistical explanations of private investment. Unsurprisingly, high risk discourages investment (Collier, 2007).

Social Venture Capital (SVC) is being used today to combat poverty because it does not operate like a typical ‘profit-minting machine’, where the risks have to be methodically calculated. Social enterprises are either for profit or non-profit social venture fund investing in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries. They pursue financial, social, spiritual and environmental returns. Social enterprises do not require the same rate of financial return since they also look for social, spiritual and environmental returns, even though they also have to be profitable in order to remain sustainable.

A number of these social enterprises are faith-based and the experience is that faith-based investors are more likely to accept a lower financial return in exchange for higher social returns. They are more able to align their financial interest with their social responsibilities. A growing number of successful entrepreneurs with a philanthropic attitude are also allocating a small percentage of their total portfolio to this form of investment.

Case studies, where partnerships between social venture capitalists and local communities are bearing fruits are evident. In Kuzuko Game Reserve (http://www.tbnetwork.org/; http://www.kuzuko.com/), neighboring Kruger National Park in South Africa, the community has entered into a partnership with South Africa National Parks, Legacy Hotels, the Disability Employment Concern Trust, South African Development Bank and the World Bank in order to develop a 39,000 acre game reserve on community land. The game reserve will offer a safari experience to tourists in a 5-star lodge managed by Legacy Hotels, a leading hotel group in Southern Africa. When it opens, the game reserve will employ 100 people directly. This project combines conservation, job creation, social and spiritual transformation in a region of 70% adult unemployment. With partner support, new commercially-viable business opportunities are currently being assessed with the aim of creating further jobs in the area.

Brains Group (http://www.brainsdirect.com/), a software outsourcing business in Moldova, but with a marketing office in the UK, is employing 100 technical people. These 100 people learning new skills and how businesses are run. They are also taught issues of integrity.

Spot Taxis in Bangalore, India, is the largest taxi franchise in Bangalore with 230 taxis. Each driver is able to own their own vehicles with a structured loan over a 3-4 year period. They all have in-car radios and are directed by a control room using a computer system which tracks their location. Some enterprising drivers now own more than one vehicle.

Thus, the role of partnership between social enterprises and local communities should be encouraged, as remarkable things can happen at both the micro and macro levels. This is more critical since most social enterprises encourage a strong work ethic, a spirit of others-centered, where the needs of local communities are pursued a long side profit. In this case, profit becomes a by-product of the process instead of an end by itself.

References
Collier, P. (2007). The bottom billion: Why the poorest countries are falling and what can be done about it. New York: Oxford.
Narayan, D., and Petesch, P. (Editors) (2007). Moving out of poverty: Cross-disciplinary perspectives on mobility. Washington, D.C.: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank.
Tan, K. (2003, October). Enterprise against poverty: The case for social venture capital.