Theodora On The Launch Pad

Maybe we are not quite on the launch pad but the rocket is being wheeled out, the launch team is getting geared up, and we are preparing for the next phase of this not quite believable endeavor. 

I last posted about Theodora in June. A ton has happened. Most significantly, we have gotten super serious about getting funding for the next phase of growth. Maybe I should pull back and recap what has happened to date

In April 2020 we launched Theodora Ghana Virtual Assistants mostly based on our own belief right in the teeth of the pandemic gale. Despite that obstacle, we managed to prove to ourselves that our theories on taking women from the street who had resorted to sex work to survive and transforming them into reasonably acceptable potential virtual administrative assistants could work.

In October 2020, I was finally able to get back to Ghana and we painfully worked through getting our team of participants more focused on what we needed to do to have success providing business services, the key to our success. But there was still critical weaknesses. We had no place where our people could come to work which meant we couldn't give them a structured environment. And we had no local management, which meant I was trying to do it from afar which was far, far from ideal.

In January 2021, we thought we were doing pretty good with our group of test clients. But a volunteer did some interviewing and we found we were incorrect. I threw myself more into client engagement and we started to get that turned around.

March 2021 we finally secured a physical location. Just having our people come to a formal work site had very positive influences on behavior and focus.

I got vaccinated and was comfortable going back to Ghana in April 2021. We recruited a local manager. The positive, she was an incredible talent, personality and person of values. The negative, we couldn't afford her. She offered to work part-time while keeping her day job. Since she was working from home, that was easy to do as she just moved 'home' to our office. There was an immediate surge in professionalism and focus from the women.

Spring of 2021 and I am thinking about how we fund getting our manager on full-time. I am using a new international network creating service called Lunchclub. I am making incredible connections. One of them is a professional fundraiser for not-for-profits. He tells me to forget donations. Turn the Virtual Assistant business into a for-profit business and seek what is called social impact capital - money that wants to both do good and make a return. This fits us fine as we always have thought of the Virtual Assistant business as a moneymaker. AND he says add another zero to the money I am looking for - go from $50 thousand for one year to $500 thousand for three years. I think about this for all of a week and say "Damn, I am going for it."

This is transformational. I now have to think about how we would actually grow rapidly and how we would spend (wisely) that kind of money. In June 2021, I am back in Ghana working with my team to think in detail what we need to grow and what it will cost. 

Through the summer via Lunchclub we meet a guy in Singapore who want to help us with our Pitch Deck, a critical document for going after serious money. This guy is great. He sees us in ways I hadn't and has us change our focus so that we are a platform for creating future businesses that will employ the women we are trying to help. This truly transforms our pitch and places us in an innovative space that few in the social impact market of Africa are. It is really crazy. Here is in brief our new pitch.

Theodora Africa is an innovative platform whose mission is to transform the lives of African women via the power of business creation. Hundreds of thousands of African women find themselves funneled into sex work due to environmental factors (no social safety net, lack of jobs, misogynistic culture). We use the power of business creation, but not any business creation, but businesses that provide meaningful business services to under served developed country markets.

 

Our primary innovations are:

 

1.   We find the market opportunity first before we recruit and train – seeking out under served markets for outsourced services in developed countries where our sales price is a value to our clients but the amount earned is substantial for our participants.

 

2.   Creating specific environments to drive behavior change – don’t just teach…create a total immersion into a new set of values that drives individual transformation of participants faster.

 

3.   Pathway to ownership – we are not the entrepreneurs…our goal is to make our participants the ultimate owners so we don’t just create jobs, we create capital.

 Now we are really getting attention because no one in the social impact space starts with the idea that we find the market to sell services before we start training people!

In the meantime, our super local manager's employer requires her to work out of the office again. Bummer. She can't be onsite and give the direction we need. She, of her own volition, says she's not earning her money. She suggests we take what we are paying her and use it to recruit a full-time Team Leader, an more experienced woman who can lead but also do some of the work. We are fortunate to find a person who not only has the qualifications but whose early life is much like our participants. 

I now have a real management team. We are going balls to the walls to finish our Pitch Deck and start going after investors. I am heading back to Ghana next week. I have a detailed operating improvement plan to start implementing. 

Can all this really be happening? This is truly stranger than fiction. Theodora Africa to Ground Control, please commence the rocket fueling process.