National Post (National Edition)
Making the most of that ‘aha’ moment
In every entrepreneur’s life there is a moment (or sometimes more than one) when they discover their true purpose. By studying those moments, you may better understand when your own moment arrives — and what to do then.
At the recent Skoll World Forum in Oxford, England, social entrepreneurs from Europe, North America, Africa and Asia gathered to share their “Aha!” moments. Their life-changing stories proved that solutions are always around us, when we are brave enough to ask the right questions.
Josh Babarinde was an overachieving political science and economics graduate from the University of London who grew frustrated working in government. As an idealistic social worker and then an adviser to municipal governments, he longed to do something more direct to help Britain’s needy.
In April 2015, at the impatient age of 23, he found his calling: working with atrisk youth in East London. Initially assuming that disaffected youth committed crimes by choice, he discovered most yearned for civility and stability. “They want to earn money, be respected, be employed,” he says. “I talked to so many who said they had to deal drugs, and they would slip the cash into their mum’s handbag to help her pay the bills.”
Babarinde looked for a way to help young offenders escape the cycle of poverty. He knew he had to find a solution that replicated gang values of income, belonging and self-worth. He wanted his approach to be tech-focused, to give his charges a future. But he also knew his solution had to give them quick, satisfying tools to achieve self-reliance — which ruled out teaching them coding or web design.
His breakthrough came when he learned that 29 per cent of people have cracked cellphone screens. He found that in just five days he could teach unskilled workers to fix iPhones. The average repair takes 90 minutes and costs 30 pounds (about $50), giving his trainees the opportunity to start businesses without expensive equipment or premises. Result: Babarinde formed Cracked It, a social enterprise that has now trained 63 people aged 16 to 24.
The best graduates can work for Cracked It’s corporate clinics, in which a group of technicians swoop into organizations to fix employees’ phones on the spot. The clinics, says Babarinde, enable his technicians to develop social skills, build confidence and contact lists.
According to Babarinde, at-risk youth make good businesspeople. “They’re using their entrepreneurial skills positively. It turns out they’re great at sales, managing their money and finding new clients.” As for technical skills, the Evening Standard has already named Cracked It “London’s Best iPhone Fixers.”
Now that he’s proven his model works, Babarinde needs to grow Cracked It from a one-person startup into a sustainable system. He’s working with organizations such as the Employers’ Forum for Reducing Reoffending — a blue-chip council that includes Cisco, DHL and Marks & Spencer.
To a true entrepreneur, the “Aha!” moments never stop. You just think bigger.
With an MBA from Stanford, Christine Su had no trouble securing lucrative consulting positions. But when she was celebrating a promotion in Hong Kong in December 2010, her father asked, “Are you happy?” She responded: “I’m running factories in China. I haven’t seen a blue sky in 10 months.”
That epiphany caused Su, a self-described “obnoxious sustainable-food nerd,” to rethink her life. She decided to use her management skills to promote more environmentally friendly food networks. She returned to Stanford to study land use and agriculture — making up for her lack of experience by working on “every farm I could on four continents.”
That fieldwork paid off when Su found a niche: replacing farmers’ paper-based grazing plans with a pasture-management software platform. By combining GPS technology, mobile data and easy record-keeping, PastureMap enables farmers to boost yields by 100 per cent or more through data-based herd management and more efficient grazing. Su hopes more productive pastures will not only help farmers boost production, but encourage more open-range feeding and reduce the use of crowded, stressful feedlots.
After selling his US $100million travel-accessories business, TravelSmith, in 2004, San Francisco entrepreneur Chuck Slaughter joined the board of The Health Store/CFW Shops, a pharmacy group founded to distribute essential medicines to remote communities in Kenya. But the chain was struggling. In considering turnaround solutions, Slaughter used a problemsolving framework he learned in primary school: “I notice … I wonder …”
Slaughter noticed the stores were empty half the day as pharmacists waited for customers to walk through the door. He wondered what would happen if they spent that time in the community, knocking on doors and visiting schools. Tests proved the organization could reach new patients. But that made Slaughter wonder what would happen if the organization shut its stores and used only mobile agents.
That’s when he realized his idea had a successful model: Avon. The US$10-billion-ayear cosmetics company pioneered door-to-door sales in the 19th century when villages had poor access to quality goods and women had few money-earning opportunities — a setting akin to rural Africa today.
So Slaughter became an Avon salesman and studied best practices in direct sales before founding Uganda-based Living Goods in 2007. The organization now has 6,000 mobile health workers, and its outreach has helped reduce child mortality in rural Uganda by 25 per cent. “Epiphanies,” says Slaughter, “only come from trying a lot of things.”