Idle Hands Find Mischief

 The way the fall schedule played out with us spending two months in Sicily, I didn't have a very big window for getting in my Fall Ghana trip. As we don't do anything on Thanksgiving with the family all over the world, we decided I should schedule it then. But I didn't want to be flying in the USA on Thanksgiving Sunday. So I am staying an extra day. To be honest, I'm bored. Typically, I come to Ghana a few days before work is to start so I can acclimate. Then the Saturday after my last day of work, I return. My mental state is prepared for that. Staying this extra day, I really don't have anything to do. 

The area where I am staying has a lot of retail close by, stores, coffee places, restaurants, banks, supermarkets. And right within walking distance, A Nail Salon. I've only had a pedicure a couple of times, but I really like them. I hate cutting my own toe nails. With the Ghana Cedi at record lows against the dollar, I figured, why not.

I went over and when they started work, my attendant asked if I wanted any color. This is where things started to go a bit off the track. I had joked with my team for many trips that I was going to do something in the way of different with nails. I figured, why the heck not. You're not getting younger. 

Meet my Artist

I've never done anything like this. I was very intrigued by the steady hands and tight lines

We came to the hardest part. She had to do this many times over. But she wouldn't quit.

Now we have set the results

And Voila! The Ghanaian Flag

Showing my support for the people of the Republic of Ghana

(Note: It should be a five point start. You try free hand painting a five point star on a toenail)

Key Characteristics of Theodora Africa That Make It A Unique Social Impact Enterprise

A lot of things we talked about early on in Theodora Africa were viewed with skepticism. And if I were to  be objective (which of course I am not), rightfully so. No one had done anything like what we were talking about. The whole idea of taking a young woman, from Africa, with no knowledge of the United States, no knowledge of how formal business was done in their own county let alone in the U.S., and turning them into a professional administrative assistant seemed preposterous. 

 

Yet, it is in fact what we have done (though we are not a finished product yet) and we are well beyond the proof of concept phase, building a true base to be a successful, self-funding, social impact business. What is curious to me is how both the concept and the enterprise are now perceived. I get a much different reception these days. As opposed to the polite smiles covering skepticism I received in the beginning, I am having significant players - both business and social impact - speaking with us seriously. 

 

I suspect a lot of this is simply because we are still around and we actually have clients who like what they are getting and still paying us. Nothing gets attention more than making your promise a reality. But we do have some very unique aspects to our program compared to others working in the same social impact space. As a result of this new attention, we've gotten much more focused on the distinctive points of our program. On the off chance that you might run across or know someone engaged in the social impact space related to African development or know business owners who have a social impact inclination, I am providing these for you below.

 

1.     We are Market Driven – We find markets for outsourced services in the U.S. that are under-served. This means we know where we are going to sell our services before we work with the first person we want to transform. This strategy is opposite of almost every other social impact organization looking to serve similar populations.

 

2.     We Have an Environment That Promotes Rapid Behavior Change – Because we are a business and we have real customers with real expectations, the new women brought into Theodora understand they must immediately take on a new set of personal behaviors to succeed. This transforms their personal lives. It gives them confidence. It gives them life skills.

 

3.     Everyone is Paid from the Beginning – All our participants get what is effectively a middle class wage from the time they are fully taken into the program. This also builds self-worth and keeps participants from falling back.

 

4.     We Are A Team – We work together. We support each other. We work on clients together. We are creating our own culture of transformation and empowerment.

 

5.     We Are A REAL Business – We provide services that are in high demand to a set of clients that have difficult affording these services at American Wages

 

6.     Our Market Potential Is Huge – There are 25 million businesses with no employees (2020 census) in the U.S. A typical Theodora Africa participant can easily handle 5 clients. If we had 1000 women working – 5000 clients – we would not even have measurable market share.

 

7.     We Will Become Self-Funding – We are currently working to achieve breakeven. We expect to get there no later than the end of the second quarter of 2023. Our profit potential is such that we will be able to add new participants at that point on our own.

 

8.     Doing Good By Getting Good – Theodora Africa is one of the few programs where a business person can know they are making an impact while they are getting valuable services for themselves.

Theodora Update - An Awareness Arises

 I have not written about the Theodora Africa Project in a while as we were deep in the transformative and transitional experience in Sicily. Things are progressing at a dynamic pace. You might remember in July we had the significant event of a major donor visiting. They were doing their own investigation to determine how 'real' the program was as concerned their getting more deeply involved. I never followed with a report on the outcome.

Based on what was observed, these donors with another of our major contributors, Theodora received a commitment for funding to help it finish it's second phase - building out necessary business systems required to have a genuine business that could be scaled and testing same. There was caveat with this major contribution (one I totally supported). The donors wanted our group to focus on getting to breakeven. This means making enough income to cover all your expenses. At the time this commitment was made, we were just moving from the test of adding a new group of people, training them, finding out if we could train and integrate them effectively. It required us to pivot and refocus what we were doing.  It forced us to fulfill the promise we've made that this will be a 'real business'.

With that in mind, we have been schooling our team on all it takes to have 'a real business'. We had an interesting couple of sessions this week. I walked them through how we calculate our breakeven point. There was a particular emphasis on two things - the total number of hours we actually bill compared to the total hours we have available for work (utilization rate), and the effective hourly rate we earn on each hour worked. (Note, we used a fixed price billing system not an hourly billing system. Thus as we become more effective and efficient, we spend less time on a job and the effective amount we earn per hour worked goes up.)

Because we added a bunch of new people to prove we could do so before seeking more revenue, our actual utilization rate is very low. So we have a lot of potential hours to bill. Plus we have a lot of opportunity to increase our effective hourly rate. I put a simple spreadsheet up with a projector and we started to run some numbers. Have you had the experience where you are talking and you can really tell the audience gets it? That's what I saw in the team's eyes and heard in their voices. They got it. They understood that if they account for their time and they manage their time better and better, the potential for them to make more money grew. That was a pretty important breakthrough as the effectiveness of their working is the primary variable they have control over. 

As any manager or planner will tell you, it is one thing to understand a concept. It is another to implement it and make it a reality. That is our next step. How do we adjust how we actually do and manage work to control those variables. 

But when you consider the youth of our group and the circumstances they are coming from, this is a huge realization. I can tell you from years of work with American business, there are plenty whose people never get this realization. It's pretty exciting actually.

Back To Ghana

 It was sooooo boring. Just being home after the excitement of Sicily and the proposed transformation of our life. I mean I was back for 10 days. Too long. Time to get out again. So it is off to Ghana to get back in deep with Theodora Africa Project. 

I am actually just cooling my heals in an airport lounge in New York's JFK airport where I have a 6 hour layover before my last flight to Ghana. And I need to catch a nap here for jet lag management. 

Much, much is going on with the project since my last post on on this forum. But it is late so I will just set this up as a placeholder. 

More to come soon.

Sicilian Trip Reflections - The Traditional Navel-Gazing Post

So we are back in the homeland, Albuquerque, New Mexico after our ordeal of getting back. An we've started the next part of our test...how would we feel about being back after this extended time living in a different country, with an entirely different lifestyle and life pattern. Well the initial reaction on both our parts has been, we are ready to move on. So let's go into this in greater detail.

We Don't Want To Deal With A House

I think this is a big one. During the time we were building the tower, it was all about creating a space which gave us joy. AND IT DID! It is a magnificent place. It has so much beauty associated with it. BUT, it also requires a LOT of maintenance. Just the regular maintenance of cleaning it, washing windows, having the yard maintained is extremely time-consuming. Is that what we really want to be doing with our lives? And then there is the upcoming age of property related maintenance one can expect. There is tons. None will be inexpensive. And it will take a great effort to find and oversee those to do the work. Is that what we really want to be doing with our lives. Both Wife and I seem to be at a point where the answer is no.

The Attraction Of Time Zone Change

I am going to be as explicit as possible. My involvement with Theodora Africa is going to go on for as long as I humanly can do it. I have never, NEVER been involved with something that both is doing so much good and has so much potential. And as we continue to evolve, my work becomes less and less of what I don't like and more and more of what I do like. What does this have to do with the physical location of where I live? A lot

When I am in New Mexico, I am six or seven hours behind Ghana. If I get up a 4am, it is 10 or 11am in Ghana. If there are things that need my attention, I am going to be doing them during my early hours. I can work three hours in the morning before anyone here is ready to even think about starting their day. What did we find in Sicily. I was two hours ahead of Ghana. If I came to work at 3pm, it was 1pm in Ghana, plenty of time to work on their important stuff. That left almost a half a day where Wife and I could just interact. That leads to...

A Different Life Pattern

 It means that I essentially have hours and hours of time in the morning and early afternoon to myself. I applied these to reinventing our daily lifestyle and refocusing my energy and attention on Wife. I went for walks virtually every day. I shopped and cooked daily. We ate breakfast together daily. Instead of working 10 hours +,  My work day was maybe 6 to 7 hours. It was wonderful. 

We Want To Do More, Not Less - Elder Adventurers

Wife and I are simply not ready to pack it in. I don't care what our age is. All those crazy driving experiences? We feel it is great that we can deal with them. We want to keep seeing and doing new things. Staying in Albuquerque and in our house is not going to give us that. At some point, our physical/mental capabilities will collapse and we will have to pack it in. But we are not going to facilitate it by staying in our long-term home that has (honestly) become a rut.

I Want To Live In Another Country 

Living a year in France as a college student was one of the most profound and enjoyable experiences of my life. Early on I had hoped to work in another country, but that was not to be. Fast forward, when we started traveling, I had hoped to capture that long ago feeling. But nothing we did was like that. It was fun. But it was not living in a country. Partly it was a result of our desire to want to see and experience so much. But as age has reduced our ability runaround, the attractiveness of being in one place has grown. Our two months living in a single location, a town, a community, brought all this back. I LOVED just walking around, enjoying daily life, imbibing the total difference of sights, sounds and energy of this different environment. I am ready for this again!

So Wife and I are now in deep discussion and research on how we make our desire a reality. Stay Tuned.

Air Travel Hell (But Not the MUPGT Type)

Long-time readers (remember this blog started in 2007!) will remember the Magical Unicorn Pony God of Travel (MUPGT). For those who are new, MUPGT is the minor deity that is responsible for all of the mishaps that take place when you travel. These can be relatively minor like flights losing your first class upgrade to relatively major like missing an important meeting or cruise sailing because of a flight being late. MUPGT's purview is the realm of last minute travel disruption. During my road warrior years, MUPGT and de-I had many a battle. As my travel moved to being pleasure oriented, I was not much of an opponent any more but we have still gone head-to-head on more than one occasion. (You can read about these by going to the Magical Unicorn Pony God of Travel label). This time, I must say, our issues were not of the typical MUPGT variety. For they were a product of the dysfunction the air travel system underwent trying to rebound from the pandemic lock downs. 

We have to back to the beginning of the year. Air travel was picking up. The days of discounts available just because you were a body not too scared to travel were over. Airlines were jacking the prices up to make up for the lost revenue and profit of 2020 and most of 2021. But at the same time they were having all kinds of problems getting the crews and planes they needed after the cutbacks imposed during the pandemic years. The result was super expensive fares and flight itineraries that were constantly changing - often in the most frustrating ways. 

So it was when I made the reservations for this trip. To get a reasonable fare, we had to fly out of Chicago and self-connect through another reservation from Albuquerque to Chicago. No sweat. Done that many times. The United flights to Palermo wasn't too bad but all the options coming back required an overnight stay somewhere. I opted for one where we stayed overnight in Washington, D.C. My self-connect was on American as I had some credits I wanted to use and there was an ideal flight leaving in the morning from Albuquerque to Chicago getting us there with plenty of time. 

So far so good. But no. Now come the schedule changes. They always come in the form a very polite email. "Oh so sorry to disrupt all your careful plans. But we have changed your flight so it now totally F's your planning". Actually they don't say that exactly. That's just the way I read it. So American tells us many months ago it is changing its flights from Albuquerque to Chicago. The new flight arrives just when the connection flight leaves. Going online and calling, I find the only option is a connection through Dallas-Fort Worth AND they want to almost double the cost for the privilege. Thanks.

So I cancel that flight and look on United because I know there are connections that will work there and I have preference meaning our bags won't be a problem. Great. Good connections in both directions going through Denver which minimizes the time in the air. 

But wait. There's more. Right, another 'dear beloved passenger we are going to make your life miserable' email. Our Denver option coming home is off the table. The only to do what we want is take a flight through Houston which is way longer both in total time and the time in the air. But we have no choice, so we took it.

And it turned out every bit as long and arduous as I feared. 46 hours total in transit from living our apartment in Sicily to our door in Albuquerque. 

I am making a vow. No more crazy connections like this. If I have to pay more to get civilized routing, I will do it.