Visiting Ghana - What de-I Eats #67- Gifty and FuFu with Okro Soup

Well, getting close to the end of another Ghana/Theodora trip. I will give a postmortem when I get back. It has been an eventful trip. I head back Friday night. We have two more team members to meet and authentic Ghanaian meals to experience. 

Visiting Ghana - What de-I Eats #6 - Miriam with Waakye

 The work days continue and the Ghanaian meals do as well. 

It's Unhealthy And It's An Improvement

 I have my morning routine. It doesn't vary much no matter where in the world I am. I get up very early in the morning, somewhere between 4am and 5am. I do a few bodily necessities. I go to wherever my computer is. I power it up. I will spend 10 to 30 minutes catching up on email, answering inquiries, and checking out a few sites and blogs before I go to do my hour of meditation or yoga. One of the sites I visit is Weather Underground. 

In Ghana, we are in a part of the year known as the Hamatan. The Hamatan is the tropical hot, dry season...with a twist. The twist is a continuous flow of air from north to south bringing dust in from the Sahara Desert. It results in this constant haze of dust in the air. You from New Mexico will empathize remembering your May and Junes before the Monsoon. This dust is everywhere. And if you are outside the main part of the city where there are tons of dirt roads, the amount of airborne dust and its affects is mind blowing.

For the last five days, when I went to Weather Underground, the air quality was rated Extremely Unhealthy, Do not exercise outdoors! 

So you can imagine my joy today when the rating was simply, 

Unhealthy.

Visiting Ghana - What de-I Eats #5 - Evangeline with Banku and Palmnut Soup

 Our second work week in Ghana and we continue the exploration of the Theodora Team and Ghana's food.

BREAKEVEN - The Sweetest Words

 The business concept of 'breakeven' means you are bringing in enough income (sales) to cover all your expenses. You haven't made any money. But you haven't lost money either. Any start-up business works their ass off to achieve 'breakeven'. Simply put, if you can't, at a minimum achieve 'breakeven', you are going to go out of business.

Initiating a totally new concept with the social impact twist of Theodora Ghana Virtual Assistants, one expects it is going to take time before one reaches 'breakeven'. This is why one raises a lot of money, to carry one over the time until 'breakeven' arrives. This we certainly did at Theodora. 

And in the world of social impact rooted businesses, achieving 'breakeven' is a Rite of Passage. It shows the world of donors and social impact investors that you truly are able to be sustainable. At least, that is what I have been told.

All through 2023, we struggled mightily to achieve breakeven. But, it seemed as if each time we were on the brink of achieving it, something would go wrong and we'd slip back into the red (meaning losing money). It was incredibly frustrating. Then something happened right at the end of the year. We had a surge in new business from a different source than we'd gotten before. When I checked on our bank balances to pay our second payroll of the new year a week or so ago (usually the time of month when I realized that we yet again in the red), I realized that we had enough. We had covered our full month's expenses. WE HAD BROKEN EVEN! 

Truly it has taken me a couple of weeks for this to sink in. And on top of that, based on the business committed to close over the next few weeks, we should be breaking even through February and March, the whole first quarter of the year.

As I let this sink in, a part of me feels like the warrior of old. It is time for de-I to strap on the armor. It is time to go to war. All these people who told me that 'breaking even' was the critical to attracting serious money for growing a social impact venture, well now is the time to say, "We've done it. So start anteing up!"

Visiting Ghana - What de-I Eats #4 - Benedicta with Riceball and Groundnut Soup

 Last lunch of the week.

Visiting Ghana - What de-I Eats #3 - Anastasia and Yam with Kontombre Stew

 Our third installment. By the way, with the exception of my deciding to not make any repetitions of what I am eating for this series, these are the things I really do eat while I'm working in Ghana.

 Kontombre is a leafy green vegetable. So, yes, you can get a vegetable dish in Ghana cuisine.

My Next Ghana Business Project

Just kidding.

Without meaning to be disrespectful, most small business names in Ghana are rather mundane, nothing that would get you excited. However, I have been passing by this sign ever since I arrived last week and it totally intrigues me. A flood of marketing ideas and messages spew forth just thinking of the imagery from the name. I really need to meet the owner.

Visiting Ghana - What de-I Eats #2 - Mary M and Fried Rice

 Here we are with our second local food lunch in Ghana.

And later that day I met at a local hotel with two of Theodora's longest term Ghana Rotary supporters, two individuals without whose assistance, this project would never have become a reality.

From left to right Albert A, de-I, Jonas A.

Visiting Ghana - What de-I Eats #1 - Mary and Konkonte

 Each trip to Ghana to work on Theodora, I buy lunch for the office so we can be most efficient on our time. I always eat local food. I've mentioned to many people what Ghana local food is like but I don't think most can really conceptualize it. So I've decided to do a series while I'm here. Each day we are in the office I will have one of my people here introduce themselves, and introduce the food I will be having for lunch. This way you can meet the whole Theodora team and start planning your own Ghanaian culinary adventure.

Today we feature Mary F and Konkonte

Making Of The Ghana Flag

 One of my now traditions when I return to Ghana is having a pedicure done. AND having the Ghana flag put on my big toes. Mercy, the name of my pedicurist, has really upped her game. When we started this tradition over a year ago, she was totally freaked out drawing a five pointed start freehand. Now....well I will let you judge.

 

 And the Final Product

I think they came out pretty awesome. I told Mercy I was going to get Wife to have hers done with me when we visit Ghana in May. I'm not sure Wife was so excited about the idea.

Eldership Command Back In Action

After the enforced hiatus for a good third of 2023, Eldership Command is back to an active mission schedule in 2024. I am off to Ghana today for my usual couple of weeks work. Wife decided she didn't want to hang out at home so is visiting our relocated niece RM, in Madrid, Spain. She left yesterday and had a bit of an issue with one late flight but made all her connections and met up successfully with the niece earlier today. Bon Voyage to us

You Know You Are Loved...

 

When you children gift you for your 50th wedding Anniversary, a custom made bobblehead figurine of Wife and You in full travel / photo mode!

🩷

It Was The Best Of Times. It Was The Worst Of Times

What Charles Dickens wrote to open a Tale of Two Cities. It is something I have been thinking about a lot over the last few months as the Theodora Project navigates a major inflection point in its evolution. There is this combination of incredible excitement combined with ever present terror. 

I am going to go in inverse order and start with the Terror.

Money

We aren't making enough. Each month is an adventure as to whether we are going to have enough to cover our payroll. Every time I think we've made a breakthrough, something comes up to offset it. And yet, each month something also happens that allows us to get through. This has been going on for so many months now and we have made it through so many crises that I've gotten some what philosophical about it.

Why Aren't My Kids Acting Like Adults?

This is my lament about the work behavior patterns of my team...my group of women mostly just around 30 years old with a maximum of 3 years work experience each and little meaningful formal education past high school to speak of. You might catch the irony in that statement. Intellectually, I know they are doing fantastic. Emotionally, my inability to get their attention to detail to match a 10 to 15 year experience American college graduate in a top professional environment drives me a bit nuts. (BTW, I do know that the average American professional worker actual sucks at attention to detail in general).

How Do We Move Forward When We Can't Pay the Rent

This is a real likelihood in February. Fortunately, we are a virtual business and we work a lot from people's homes. But, it is difficult to build the kind of teamwork and new competency development we are working on (see below), when we are physically separated.

And now the Excitement

Honestly, there is way more that I am excited about than terrorized about. Seriously, some of the opportunities that are coming to us are so far beyond anything I would have imagined a year ago, I need to pinch myself and ask if it is real.

Joint Venture with CRM Business

For you who may not be involved with business and the tech applications for sales development, CRM, Client Relationship Management, applications that help businesses control and manage their sales processes, have been a big deal for over a decade. Yet despite this, there are still huge swaths of the business landscape that have not been using them, especially smaller businesses like the ones Theodora serves. We at Theodora have just started applying them ourselves and are already seeing the benefits. 

I met through my networking a new CRM company that is launching using only self-financing (very rare in this space). Their product has a lot of features that make it ideal for Theodora's target market. And they are very social impact oriented, don't want to develop their own client service team, and would love if we could become that resource! WHAT! You mean you want us to be essentially your outsourced resource to train and onboard all your clients. Um, let me think. How much business could that be? How much work will it take us to get that ability? Both...a lot. But it is not impossible. On the other hand, running a marathon is not impossible. Just difficult. 

Can You Provide Me With My Entire Staff?

We are also working with an ambitious cyber security business that wants to ramp up their sales substantially. The entrepreneur has mapped out a detailed plan for executing his business development plan. He says he could use three full-time people to execute this. But there is no way he can afford three full-time U.S. wage people. Did I mention, this entrepreneur has a deep feeling about helping and giving back? He has approached us asking if we can provide what he needs. The work is work we do. But we've not worked with a person who demands the response time and attention to detail he demands. And we don't have three extra people lying around. So we are working to develop a test where we give him the equivalent of one FTE (full-time equivalent) and see if we can deliver the quality and speed he needs. Did I mention that he would be willing to pay in advance for this one year cost of an FTE? More than enough for me to pay our rent?

🤯

Joint Venture with an AI Avatar Producer

Another of our clients has been developing AI based training systems. These are essentially AI powered training tools that allow the one learning to ask questions as one would a live teacher. They want us to fulfill the same function of client support and training as the CRM folks want us to. Not only would we be helping this client, and developing another line of business for us, we'd be developing training tools to help us with our own growth. Crazy!

And on top of this, I am out raising another $125 thousand to give us the management and financial strength to really pursue these opportunities. 

I mentioned in a recent post how I don't feel like I've been working (think toiling) for 50 years. I more think "How the hell do I have such an incredible challenge and opportunity at this time of life." 

It's amazing.

Glacial Writing

 A decade ago, I was possessed to write. I took a rather limited story I had developed in my youth and began to create an entire fantasy series out of it.

When I say possessed, I mean just that. It was like the story was totally complete and was using me to come into being. I would go out hiking and entire chapters would form in my head. I had to capture it in note form when I got back to make sure I remembered it all. I was writing furiously night after night. Between 2014 and 2016, I wrote four books totaling about 1,600 pages. 

During that period, I realized that I loved writing romantic, epic fantasy. I especially loved that my stories always turned out exactly the way I wanted them. Not like when I read other's fiction where I am always unhappy about how a character is developed or how a story line unfolds. 

When the last of the four books was finished, there was a let down. I had captured the complete cycle of the story. But I wanted to keep writing. I conjectured how I might create an extension of the core story. Between 2017 and 2019 I wrote a fifth book of 424 pages. It had a logical extension and I began to write the sixth installment. 

However, whereas the first four books came forth like an irrupting volcano, this sixth book has come forth with glacial, maybe even tectonic plate movement speed. For I am still working on it five years later! I think the fact that so much of my creative, emotional, and physical energy has been consumed by Theodora has had a lot to do with it. In my halcyon days, I would write 3 pages a night. Now, if I have the energy, I am lucky to get a page done a night and that is not every night. And there was a point where for the longest time I was totally stymied as to where to take the plot.

But, finally I am making progress and the pages are adding up and the story is unfolding toward its completion, at least for this book. One thing I am particularly happy about is the creation of a super villain in this book. Why is that important? I have had a pattern of making my villains conflicted souls who find themselves in situations where circumstances cause them to become bad. And then I spend many pages and books having them become redeemed. Which is fine. I like the way that all turns out. But it leaves you with a writing problem, no villain, no conflict. So I really wanted to create a bad guy who could not be redeemed. I am hoping I've got him now.