Money, Friends and Love

I have been asked by my teacher in Small Business Management to reflect on the pros and cons of setting up my own business. I was smug since they seem pretty obvious but then as I started to apply them to me I started to get cold sweats. For real…

Let’s start by the big and obvious one MONEY!!!!

(Under)financing might be a major issue because while I want to start small I would like garment to be produced in Laos and work with eco friendly suppliers, which is likely to raise the start up capital substantially.  Where am I going to get all the start up capital??? We have already started plundering our savings so that I can develop my business ideas. And when the time comes to put money where our mouth is we will probably have...nothing left to be invested. Poor husband is already buried under the responsibility of feeding us all and keeping a roof above our heads on top of moonlighting as our production and sourcing research analyst. Entrepreneurs are often advised not to quit their day job…it is a bit late for that (I have been with no employment since April 2010). I am pretty sure you should have twins in their first year either…too late for that as well.

As for my other business partner aka the talented one, we have not talked about it yet. I totally need to get over this and just ask...but I am freaking out that it might a deal breaker. The business and I need her and her skills badly. There seems to be an understanding that I will take care of the business side of things and (consequently raising the $$) and she brings expertise and know how on the table. However is it really the type of business model I want to develop, with strict boundaries between the craft and the dough? Not sure I want to be the only ‘suit’ in this whole journey.

What about my family? There are two main problems:

1-    I am supposed to be the wealthy one

2-    I won’t probably tell them I am entrepreneur until I get some kind of Small Business Award or make my first $ million. I have burnt all my credits with my folks, for them I am an intellectual dreamer. My dad famously said ‘she studied so much she went crazy’ or more recently ‘she loves school so much why does not she become a professor – at least she would be paid for going to school!’. I have also heard ‘I still have no idea of what you do for a living’, ‘how many career changes did you actually have?’ and finally ‘do you actually know what you are going to do in your life I mean when you get you know serious and all???’

That is usually when this song randomly starts playing in my head

Anyway to cut the story short it is NOT going to happen.

Another common source is friends… Why don’t I know millionaires? My friends are wealthy but probably not enough to casually drop some ten thousand dollars on the spot. As I am thinking of my friends I realize that a fair amount of them are entrepreneurs themselves and I should give all these women kudos (Go girls!!!) – not in any order of preference:

Clemence Danko is opening Choc O Pain, a French Bakery and Café in Hoboken, New Jersey. Clemence was heavily pregnant when she was hunting for the perfect location for her business and now with her baby boy Kieran strapped on her she is supervising builders and contractors!

http://chocopainbakery.blogspot.com/

Laurence Mauclere Lasalle opened Xoos, a shirt boutique on posh Kings Road in London after being fed up of advising rich people how not to pay taxes. She is now pregnant and running a boutique in one of the toughest retail high street in London.

http://www.shirt-boutique.co.uk/

Pascale Moray Helyar created Styleroscks, an original business to create your own jewelry while being mum to twins Hugo and Charlotte and moving her whole family from the UK to her native Australia. Sick isn’t it?

http://www.stylerocks.com.au/blog/hello-and-welcome-to-stylerocks

Stephanie Thierry, mum to 3 children, fashion strategy consultant, is the ultimate serial entrepreneur and just blows my mind because she still has the most amazing laugh and tongue in cheek humor. Among her latest ventures check out her luxurious and dreamy hotel 

http://www.lermitage-montsaintmichel.com/

Lisbeth Strohmenger my university mate who single handedly transformed her family’s traditional hotel, La Clairiere in La Petite Pierre, France into the first Bio Hotel and Spa of France 

http://www.la-clairiere.com/index_intro.html

Ladies bravo!!! I also want to say kudos to the husbands, partners, parents who are behind you, your madness and determination.

Indeed, another key concern for me is the impact that being a business owner will have on my whole life. While I am ready to work hard and was giving myself one to two years to get my business running the prospect of waiting perhaps years before getting any significant income from it is scary. Quality of life is likely to be lower until the business gets established and entrepreneurs’ roles as wives, fathers or parents supposedly take a back seat. I am a new mum to twins and I might be risking my family’s future livelihood to chase a red herring... I keep asking myself  ‘What is the worst that could happen if I open my business and it fails?’ I was a policy researcher before, would I ever be able to find another employment after a failed attempt at entrepreneurship? I suddenly thought I might be losing more than money!

When the sweat drops threaten to turn into buckets I close my eyes and think of my lady entrepreneurs out there and scream ‘C’mon!!!’. I hold you as keepsake to give me guts and stamina.

Should I blame my parents for this entrepreneurial dream?

I was pondering whether I possessed entrepreneurial traits: am I really future oriented? Am I a moderate risk taker? Am I confident in my ability to succeed? These days I feel more risk adverse than anything else and seriously lack self confidence.  Unemployment - and extra post pregnancy weight- does this to you unfortunately...In my self-analysis I did manage to tick 'high level of energy', sigh of relief.


One thing leading to another I started to reflect on my previous dabbles with  entrepreneurship - which all failed miserably.My first venture lasted 2 hours. I was 10 years old. The idea was fairly simple: cut roses that were hanging out of private gardens, make bouquets and sell them door to door for 10 French Francs (a bit less than $2). As far as I was concerned this whole thing was legal and a rather opportunistic business idea. The problem was that I solicited my mum's friend and within minutes (trust the Lao community to get news around) my parents heard of my little entreprise and put a lid on it illico presto. I had made a rookie mistake: targeting the wrong customer. I thought that because she knew me she would buy.  But she did not want flowers and she loaded the fact I was walking around trying to sell my bouquets! I was an embarrassment for my parents and my community because people would think we were being malnourished.
I cannot pretend it was any way like a social enterprise since all I wanted was cash to buy candies.

A couple of years later I did took part without realizing it in my first social enterprise, a family business. My mum was pregnant with her fifth child and my dad had just lost his job as a security guard. Things were pretty tough; that is when they decided to meet the needs of Lao communities living far from Asian grocery stores. (note: my childhood friend Khonesavane created an awesome initiative Lao food in Cork (check her Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lao-Food-In-Cork/184219828297766) to answer a similar issue by cooking and distributing delicious dishes. They bought a van and every Friday would go to Tang Freres supermarket to buy some coriander, mint, bean sprouts, sirarcha chili sauce, nuoc nam, 25kg bags of sticky rice etc. Every Friday evening my siblings and I would  make bouquets of herbs and 1kg bags of sticky rice. On Saturday my dad would go to different villages  and sell to Lao and Vietnamese communities who were deprived from the very ingredients that were the pinnacles of their daily meals. Without even being aware of it my parents became overnight social entrepreneurs. Unfortunately only few months later they had to close shop, cash management problems (they did have 5 children to feed), a regular death sentence for small businesses, and an unfortunate car accident put an end to the family Lao van adventure. 


This did not stop my crazy parents though who kept offering catering services (Lao sausages, beef jerky, spring rolls etc.) for weddings and other events and here we were my sister and I wrapping hundreds and hundreds spring rolls on Friday evenings! My parents never considered entrepreneurship as a long term and full time career option but rather a way to get cash when things were financially hard. As soon as they found stable employment all these ventures stopped. I did not even tell them about my aspirations because they would say: 'This is no serious job. What is the point of your 3 Masters degrees if all you want is to set up shop????'.


However now that I am embarking on this journey as a social entrepreneur I am wondering I should not thank (or blame...) them. Perhaps my parents not only taught me to be a half competent cook with all these crazy food businesses but also gave me the taste for entrepreneurship...

Here we are...

Today I decided to start a blog on social entrepreneurship. Obviously the first question is do I even know myself what I mean by social entrepreneurship?


It's a good thing to start with what I understand as entrepreneur. 'An entrepreneur is one who creates a new business in the face of risk and uncertainty for the purpose of achieving profit and growth to capitalize on them. Although many people come up with great business ideas, most of them never act on their ideas. Entrepreneurs do.' (Zimmerer, T. and Scarborough, N.)


I will not dabble in the dozen meanings of social entrepreneurship that I have found online and for now, I will stick to the definition from my preferred source...Wikipedia. 

'Social entrepreneurship is the work of social entrepreneurs. A social entrepreneur recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create and manage a venture to achieve social change (a social venture). While a business entrepreneur typically measures performance in profit and return, a social entrepreneur focuses on creating social capital. Thus, the main aim of social entrepreneurship is to further social and environmental goals. Social entrepreneurs are most commonly associated with the voluntary and not-for-profit sectors, but this need not preclude making a profit'.

The second question is why am I doing this ? Are we not all already suffering from a global overdose of blogs? 
In no special order here are the reasons: 
1- I am really too lazy and uninspired to fulfill my life long fantasy of becoming a novelist (even a very bad one) but cannot put a lid on all the words waiting to pop out of my head.
2- I keep hearing the voice of a social media consultant I used to work with. This voice say that there should be as many blogs as there are voices that need expressing. At 35 years old and after working with many communities to strengthen their voices I finally perhaps have actually something to say on my own.
3- After many failures to create successful businesses or social enterprises (more on this later) I decided to get back on the horse and give another shot at entrepreneurship. But this time I will document my journey through this blog in the hope that it will help articulate what the hell I am trying to do, get some kind of scrutiny (if there is any bloggers following my rambling...) and of course connect with other social entrepreneurs. In other words, I am ready to go 'public' with my journey as serial social entrepreneur.
4- No Julie and Julia the movie has not been the trigger...Instead my nanny turned to me to bounce back ideas about a potential African restaurant business that would bridge between different communities. That is when I thought that I should really test out all the advice I am giving her. 
5- I have been living in NYC for 2 years now and it is bloody time to live the motto 'if I can make it here...'


So here we are then.
Soumountha