Haute’s elevator
pitch is:
“Haute empowers
entrepreneurs in Africa by providing them with management training and
consulting services. Since 2007, Haute
has worked with 195 clients, who have used the knowledge and skills gained from
our services to grow their businesses and create over 300 new jobs in Africa.”
Two key concepts
are embedded in this statement:
1.
Empowering. We only work with existing business
owners. If you are an existing business
owner, you already have a passion for your business and are trying to grow
it. We aren’t in the business of
convincing anyone to be an entrepreneur that isn’t one already. We are only in the business of empowering
people to do what they are already trying to do. Haute hasn’t grown any businesses or created
any jobs in Africa – our clients have.
2.
Clients. We only have “clients”. We do not have “recipients” or
“beneficiaries”, as many other nonprofits do.
A management training or consulting company here in the US (e.g.
McKinsey, Booz) has clients – and not recipients or beneficiaries – so why
would Haute be any different? After all,
our clients are highly intelligent and often masters of their specific
trade. We ask our clients for feedback
on how to improve our services, and our entire consulting process is built
around listening to them and helping them to achieve their business goals. We don’t degrade our clients by acting like
we know what is best for them.
Given Haute’s
approach, we found the TED Talk below by Ernesto Sirolli to be spot-on. It’s 18 minutes long and is insightful but
also quite entertaining. Enjoy!
Interesting video. I think there is definitely a lot to be said for the approach as described above and by Ernesto Sirolli. What are your views on the distinction between telling someone to be an entrepreneur and telling them how to be and entrepreneur? In addition, what are some of the other factors contributing to success outside of the preexisting passion for business?
ReplyDeleteExisting business owners are the clients that are most able to turn our management training and consulting services into business growth that creates jobs and improves peoples' lives. So Haute only works with existing business owners. Our clients have already "self-selected" as entrepreneurs by the very fact that they have a business. I acknowledge that there are some latent entrepreneurs out there who haven't started their businesses yet, but they are difficult to identify and separate out from those that are just "interested" in entrepreneurship.
ReplyDeleteI honestly don't know the complete answer to your second question. Level of schooling came to mind as a possible answer, but we have a few clients who didn't attend school past grade school who are very successful. I would say that persistence and discipline are two key characteristics of our most successful clients. Persistence is key even here in the United States, let alone in Guinea, which ranks 175th out of 183 countries on the World Bank's East of Doing Business index (www.doingbusiness.org/rankings). Discipline (e.g. filling out your accounting journal at the end of each day) is usually boring, but tends to yield superior results.