Entrepreneurial Insights - Entrepreneurial Solutions to Poverty

It's my pleasure to introduce Andreas Wiedmir this evening. And Andreas and I were talking about could I end up reading a page and a half of his accomplishments and what he does and what he has done in the past. And I'm going to leave that as part of what he going to talk about tonight. But he is the co founder of the seven fund and he works this fund works with closely with entrepreneurs and investors and faith leaders around the world to foster enterprise solutions to poverty and promote good business practices. He has been a very successful business person in his life and he'll talk a little about that. And he also was a Swiss Guard for the Pope. So without further ado, I'm going to let Andrea take over. Andreas take over and chat.

Thank you. Can you all hear me? Okay, thank you. Can you hear me? So a short 20 years ago I was in school just like you. I went to school in Massachusetts at a small liberal arts college. I came from Switzerland and see I met my, then my girlfriend back in Europe and I tried to, you know, get pursue her or how do you say that today? And I tried to find a way to get into the US so I could be closer to her. She's from Chicago and there was this little school in Boston that said, you know, if you want to come here, we'll let you in. Without taking any examinations. Which was good because I didn't speak any English at the time and you know, I just had to perform. You know, they gave me one semester to catch up with the language and then, and then I could, and then I had to perform at a certain level to stay in school. Are there any non English speakers in here? What are you? I'm from South Korea. From South Korea. Anybody else? So it's just the two of us. Great. I know how tough it is to do this, what you're doing. So my respect. And so I joined this little college. I already had a degree in Switzerland, but I wanted to be closer to Michelle, that's her name. And so I moved over here to the US and I started to study very soon after. I was already 23 years old so I was a little bit of an older student. And very soon after we got married and then I still was in school and she started to work and I thought well I should do something too. And but I didn't have a work permit so you can't just come here and work. You need all kinds of papers and so on. But there was an ad, See Michelle told me just find some non paid work if you do a good job, there's no such thing as non paid work. And I found in the placement office there was an ad, remember that was in 89, there was an ad in the placement office that said we are looking for somebody who speaks a couple of languages. We're a very small company, we can't really afford to pay you, but we have all these crazy foreigners calling us all the time trying to buy our products and we just can't deal with them. We have enough to do in the US So if you speak a few languages then please come and see us and be our intern, our non paid intern. And I went to that company and I had no idea what they were doing, but I speak five languages. So they said, hey, you're in. And as I started to learn more about it, see they first told me, they said, do you know anything about the Ethernet? And I said, ether, isn't that something that the dentist puts on you when you, when you, you know, to prevent you from having pain? And they said, no, never mind, we can teach you that. We can't teach you the language. So they ended up starting to teach me about this. Now the special thing about that company was that they were a few guys at MIT who took something called tcpip. Does anybody know what that is? They took the Internet protocol. See, the Internet was invented in the 60s and it was on large computers, on UNIX computers. And the army invented it to communicate during a nuclear war. If everything goes down, they needed a network that doesn't need one particular other station to be up and running. That it's a fluid network that can communicate where anybody can communicate with anybody else, even if 90% of it would be destroyed. That is the genesis of the Internet. And it was built on these Unix computers. And the language for this that is highly, highly fault tolerant is called TCPIP. And so that was 20 some years old. And these few students that I met there, they had this brilliant idea of taking this, this protocol and translating it so that a personal computer could understand it. So that now with our company, and there were a few others who tried to do the same thing now with our company, suddenly your PC or your laptop can jump onto the Internet and you actually have what the Internet is today. You cannot imagine how when I arrived there, there were orders, pages, I mean there were piles of fax orders there for this product where people wanted to see this and try this out and from all over the world. But they had so much to do in the U.S. they could never, they never had Enough time to worry about foreigners. And I joined there as the non paid intern pretty much running the international department. They ended up giving me a credit card saying whenever you're off school, go and travel and go talk to these people and just keep them away from us, just shelter them and as long as you take care of this, that's fine. Well, you didn't have to tell me that twice. I was traveling at every break that we had and the company grew and grew and grew and I started to, I had a profit unit so I started to have this profit and I hired more people. And before you know it, I'm still in college, so to speak. I would go very early in the morning to do work and deal with Asia and then go to my lectures during the the middle of the day. I would go very early in the morning to deal with all the Europeans, do my lectures in the middle of the day and in the evening go back to deal with Asia when it's their morning. The next day. I started to have first one employees, 2, 5, 10, 20, 30 and I'm still in school. And eventually I received a green card to be able to work and they made me an employee. And I. And they said earlier on, they said, you know, we're going to just give you these stock incentive options or incentive stock options. And that didn't mean anything. In 1990 nobody knew anything about that really. And you know, who knows? Maybe one day they'll be worth something. And one day they were worth something. In 1993 we went public. Now this is before Netscape. Does anybody even know what Netscape is anymore? That was before Netscape. Netscape was built on us. If you look at the Internet, FTP would be what's called the plumbing of the Internet. It's so far down, it's so rudimentary that today you don't even worry about this anymore. But every one of your devices, on the phone, on the PC, on the computer, on the laptop, this is all run with tcpip. Today that's a bit like Kleenex, but that was the company I was in. And we grew this in 93 I graduated and we went public and I moved over to Europe. And at the end of this I had a, a division, an international division of it with 150 or 200 million dollars, I don't know, and 100 more or more people. And I was living the high life. But then something happened that the CEO kept buying other companies. And you know, in the beginning you have to see the culture that we had. This was just a few of us. Every Friday afternoon, we would sort of. At 3 o', clock, we'd stop working and somebody would bring a case of beer. Am I allowed to say that here? And we would all sit down and shoot debris and have fun and would actually come up with new product ideas because this was our life. This was my lifeblood. I loved working there. That was not work to me. That was just hanging out with my buddies. These became my friends. We had a common vision to go and fight for this, where people said, oh, the Internet is too open and how is this ever going to be accepted? And so on. I went around to evangelize that around the world to talk about how this is really the way to go with some success and some failures at any given moment. But it became my passion. And this was almost like my family. And we had this common goal of getting this done. As soon as we became public, an outside CEO came in and he was very, very focused on. On, of course, the bottom line. Before that, you know that it never occurred to me. I mean, I always thought about profitability and everything, but it never occurred to me that that was the end. Because to us, that wasn't the end. To us, the end was bigger than that. We wanted to bring this good thing to the market and share it and sort of share our joy over this innovation that we had with others. It was hugely successful and hugely profitable. But then, as we go public and things become more and more sort of straightforward and straight line, this new CEO comes in and he started to buy companies left and right and growth. And from one quarter to the next, you have to grow by this exact much and so on and technology. And first of all, the first thing that went was the three o' clock, Friday. Can you imagine? Friday, three o', clock, beer. Forget it. That was just. That was the first thing that went out the door. And just the culture started to change and companies were bought. And one of these companies was in my territory in Europe. And that was a company that I knew that they were not doing right things. They were doing something called channel stuffing, which I won't get into right now, but that is not a good thing to do. That is in a way, like lying about your numbers. And one day the CEO calls me and says, hey, I bought this company. Go and announce this at this big three trade show, cbit, at the big computer trade show in Europe. You know, you're gonna announce that next week. I'm saying, how can you buy this company? That's a Total dud. Well, but here we are. They already signed the agreement, and I have to go out there and talk about that. I had a whole room full of press because we were like the leading company. And there I stood, alone on stage, and I had to say, guys, we just bought this company. And then you have to give the corporate spiel of saying how great this idea is, what a great company, everything this is. But you know what? I knew that that was a lie. I didn't agree with that. And the worst you can imagine happened to me, I stand there, and as I'm giving this spiel. Corporate spiel. As you wish. It occurred to me that I'm actually not telling the truth. And I froze. And I had the. You know, I had some things in my hand, and it fell. And they're all over the place, and they weren't numbered. Number your pages, guys. And they were all over the place on the floor. And I'm not. I can't say anything. And I go all red. And I'm telling you, it was the longest minute in my life with all of these cameras and everybody there. And here I am feeling totally out of place. And I have no idea what to say because my voice inside is telling me, you're lying right now, and you can't do that yet. My duty felt. I felt like I had to go and just say what I was told to say, and I couldn't do it. And so I sort of fumbled through it and didn't really finish and said, you know, I'll take any questions offline, and sort of left. And it was a horrible. I can tell you, this is a horrible, horrible feeling to be in front of a group like this and completely lose your train of thought and just totally embarrass yourself. But it was this feeling that they wanted me to lie, and I couldn't do that. That is not that. I never lie, by the way. I don't want to stand here in front of you doing that. But it was just in that moment, this is what happened. I went home that night and I said to Michel, you know what? I have to leave this company. I can't do this anymore. And we lived in Europe at the time, you know, the penthouse, the Mercedes, you name it. We flew around first class everywhere. And I said, okay, I gotta go. And eventually left the company. I was recruited into another company called Dragon Systems. They did this. They had the same problem statement, if you wish. They had a technology that was unheard of before and made a huge leap in productivity and they had a year, they had the prototype and they had a year Runway to get this product ready, to introduce it into the market. The product is a speech recognition product. Product that you can talk to your computer rather than type. And it again, I started a year before it came out and we prepared the whole thing and it was just absolutely marvelous. It was back, you know, we again had the three, the three o' clock Friday afternoon sessions because we were more than just working with each other. We actually liked each other, we actually formed bonds. I knew the kids of the other guys, I knew what they liked and didn't like. And we didn't just talk about work. And the whole thing was again about saying, we're going to bring a technology to the market that is going to change the way that people do computing. You can now talk. And this wasn't just saying one word at a time, but this product could understand, it could transcribe what I'm saying right now. The growth was incredible. I mean, we grew that company over a period of five, six years. I mean more, I mean, 100% a year would be a failure. And eventually we sold the company for $600 million and I owned a chunk of that. So you can imagine that at that point I was 35, just before 35 and I was done. And by then I fell into a trap. I started to think that it was me. I thought that the success was based on what I did and that this wasn't being at the right time and the right place and doing your best and that everybody's replaceable, but you end up thinking about, you know, I'm the man, they need me, I do this, this is what I'm good at, and I can go and do magic somewhere. And so when they. So instead of cashing out, which Michelle wanted me to cash it out, we were actually on a trip and she would sometimes travel with me. We were in Singapore at the Raffles Hotel, if that means anything to you. It's a beautiful place. And they called and they said, hey, Widmer, you can, you know, there's like a three day window where you can sell your shares. There was a deal, we sold this company to another company for shares. And then there's a three day window where you can cash out. But you know, cashing out is a bit frowned upon because that means you don't really trust the thing, but you could. And so they called and asked me and I said, no, no, no stoic face, no, no, no, I'm not. Because I knew the new CEO. And he told me how much he thinks also that I'm the man and that I'm going to do all these wonderful things. And I was by then working very much in the Asian market, and. And, you know, speech recognition is even much more valuable over there than it is here because of the keyboards and the characters. And I said, no, no, no, I'm not going to sell anything. And so Michelle said, please hang up and tell them to call back. I want to talk with you. And then we had this talk in the hotel room where she said, what do you want? I mean, how much money do you need? When is enough enough? I mean, we can take this money and go and do. Remember when we met all these years ago, and we can finally go and do what we want to do and just have a nice life and do things that we want to do and so on. And I said, no, no, this is what I want to do. I'm actually good at it. I can do magic. And I said, here's the deal. I'm going to sell a piece of it, which is your piece, but the other stuff is mine. And watch me. This is like in poker, you know, where you put the other thing in. And I. So I sold some to what I would. What I call then, placate her. And the rest of it, the vast majority of it, I kept. And I kept in there. And then about a month later, I was on a trip. By then I was in Japan. And the CEO, the CEO who told me how great I was and everything, called me and said, hey, we have a problem. Tell everybody to leave the conference room. I need to talk. Talk to you alone. Okay? Everybody leaves. I'm there. He says, are you sitting? I said, no. He says, well, okay, I want you to sit down. So I sit down, and he says, there is a little problem. They're accusing us, this is now the company who took us over. They're accusing us, that other company, of some irregularities, which of course, is complete baloney. But some junior Wall Street Journal analyst or journalists are saying that we did something wrong and so on. Totally baseless. But nonetheless, I will have to step down as of tomorrow, just to sort of preempt this a bit, saying you're stepping down because somebody told a lie about you. That's a little heavy. Well, you know how things are. And I'm just going to take a hit for the team. And he steps down. I go back to Boston, and one thing leads to another. There is more to this story than this journalist says what the journalist Actually found out is that this journalist called some of the clients in a quarterly statement you write down, I sold on the million dollars to this guy and this guy to this guy. And he called some of these clients and they said, never heard of the company. I don't know who that is. Imagine. So there's a name of a company on this statement, and this company has never heard of you. That's why this was like a firestorm. And I go back and we're all shocked. And I'm saying, who are. Who are these guys? We paid Arthur Andersen to pay to check them out and everything. And a month later, NASDAQ pulls them off the market without me ever being able to sell anything. Of course I'm gonna make this about me. Pulls them off the market and my fortune went from millions to zero. I then had to go in and sue them, trying to run after the money. So now you're throwing your own money into this, of pursuing somebody who cheated you in the first place. They lied, and the money goes down the drain because then the money is. The company is being called insolvent and they go bankrupt. And then you go to the bankruptcy court. And in bankruptcy court, somebody like me, who's a shareholder and an executive, an inside shareholder, stands way, way, way around 50 corners in line for getting their money. I didn't get a dime out of this. After making my home underneath my desk and starting to not want to come out from underneath my desk, I sort of licked my wounds and said, what is going on here? And the first thing I fixed was my marriage. And, you know, it takes a little bit of humility to go to Michelle and say, I'm sorry, I. I really screwed up. I was unfair to you. I missed. I talked down to you where you were right, you were right, we should have done that. I disrespected you. And, you know, please forgive me this. I come to my senses now with the shock of actually seeing how this. Something is wrong here, but that still doesn't. That was very good for my marriage, but that was still not very good for my career. And I started to say, how can I. What is wrong with this system? Can you see how much I was in love with this system, with the free market, with entrepreneurship, with capitalism, how we created these ideas out of nothing. Software programs that come out of somebody's mind, and we put them in. Into computers, into ones and zeros, and we do incredible things with this. And these are all my buddies. I loved doing this, and it made a lot of money. And Then somehow it spun out of control twice and you have disaster at the end. What is it with this system? Is it the system? What is it? Is there something wrong with our market system, with competition, with free market, with capitalism? These are some of the questions I had. I didn't know what the answer was, but I set out to find the answer. Now I want to shift gears. You see, my first career, it was mentioned, was as a bodyguard. I grew up in a village with 400 people in it. There were more cows in my town than people. And I'm the youngest of six kids way in the mountains in Switzerland. You know, Heidi, this story, well, I'm the male version of that. And I grew up outdoors and running around and so on and was always into the outdoors and physical stuff and so on. And of course I went through school and my getting a degree in sales management and so on, but I never. Maybe you can relate to this feeling inside of you that there is. It's about here. And it's a feeling. It's like a longing. And the first thing you do is you turn the music up, but it doesn't fix it. And then you eat something and it doesn't fix it. And then you're with your friends or with your girlfriend or with your boyfriend and it doesn't fix it. And then you smoke and it doesn't fix it. It's this feeling of longing in here. And then you drink and doesn't fix it. Do you know what I'm talking about? There's this longing inside and it's this. It's almost like something that wants to get out of you, but you can't do anything. It's just in there and you feel like. It's almost like a longing. It's a longing inside of you. I had that very strongly in my late teenage years. Trying to find my place, trying to get this. I don't know what it was that I was looking for. And I first thought that what I'm looking for is adventure. So when I learned from a friend that somebody would educate you to be a bodyguard and pay you for it, I thought that was pretty much the coolest job you could ever get. And, you know, then you walk around with bug in your ear and the gun and, you know, it's cool. And so I signed up. It's a foreign legion in a foreign state. I mean, I'm Swiss and I would have to go travel to the Vatican, which is a different state. I have to give up my passport for this. But the first thing they wanted is you have to go to the army first, just so that. I mean, in Switzerland everybody has to go to the military anyway. So I did. But they insisted you go there first because they wanted to build on it to say, well, you learn everything there first, and then we know what you know, and we take it from there. And so in 86, I joined the Swiss Guards. And it was so cool. You know, you go down there and there's a barracks and they teach you all these cool things about how to, you know, protect somebody and how to intervene when something happens and all kinds of cool stuff. And. Oh yeah, and the person we protect is the Pope. But you see, I'm a product. I didn't. I'm a cradle Catholic. I grew up Catholic, like maybe many of you, but Catholicism, it didn't mean anything to me. I didn't go there because this was the Pope, because I wanted to protect the Pope. I would have protected anybody. And, and so I went there and went through my recruit school. And then one of my very first assignments was to go and guard the Pope at his apartment upstairs in this palace. So you think the Pope lives in the palace? Well, he lives in the palace, but there is like a three bedroom apartment all the way upstairs, a small place, and that's his apartment. So it's not like the guy lives in a palace. He lives in an apartment in that big building. But there's a little room outside of the apartment and that's where the guard is to let people in and out. Well, that was one of my first assignments there. And that was in December, and it was the 24th of September, and I was to report for duty at something like 8 or 9 o' clock in the evening. Now, in Europe, especially in my part of Europe, 24th December is way more important than the 25th to us, Christmas morning is Christmas evening. And especially in my family, that is the big. That's the biggest holiday of the year. It's Christmas Eve. The 24th in the evening is like the feast. My family's favorite holiday. My mother cooks stuff only on that day, special stuff that she never cooked any other time. And did I mention yet, I'm the youngest of six. And so we have this huge family and we all get together and it gives me goosebumps just to think about that celebration. But here I am so far away from home, never really been away before, and I'm standing there saying, okay, I have to go work tonight. There was one telephone. There's 115 of us and There was one telephone downstairs in the barracks, right in front of the dining hall. And so I stand in line there. There was a line of about 20 guys trying to get to the phone. And so you wait your turn. And I waited my turn. And, you know, as I'm standing there, I'm thinking worse and worse about this. And I certainly thought of all kinds of names to call my sergeant major who made me do this. And finally it was my turn, and I called home, and my dad picked up the phone and he says, hey, how are you? And happy to hear from you today? And. And I could hear in the background how they're already jolly there and doing. Celebrating. And. And he says, what are you doing tonight? How are you celebrating? I said, well, I'm afraid I'm not going to celebrate. I have to work tonight. You have to work tonight? What are you doing? And he said, well, son, I'm proud of you. You go get him. I say, yes, dad. And, you know, be tough and stuff. And then he put my mom on the phone. Now, my mom heard my dad say, you're working tonight. She never even said a word. She started crying right away. So I have my mother on the phone crying her eyes out without saying anything, just my name. Now, I don't know about you, and it doesn't matter how much army training and physical training I've received in my life. There's a rule when my mother cries, I'm gonna have to cry with her. Except here there's 20 guys standing behind me in this military setting. And I just couldn't. My tears came down and I said, mom, I love you. I hang up and I ran to my room. In the room, I changed, I got ready for my service, and I had to go all the way to the top of the palace. The way you protect somebody is in circles, you know, the closer you get. And you have to cross, like, I don't know, 15 circles or 10 circles or so, which are all the guys that you have to say, you know, is me. And so on, and you pass them. So in this state of mind, I went. I made my way up there. And eventually they. I was alone up there in that room. And it's only a small little room like this. It has a bit of a window, but it's very dark up there. And by then, of course, it was wintertime and already dark outside. And there's a little lamp on a desk because you can sit there and read something if you wish. There's a little desk there. And I didn't read anything. You know what I did? I cried my eyes out. Nobody there. Nobody's ever there. And then the radio goes off, and it's my commander. And he says, hey, Widmer, the Pope is leaving his apartment. Let him out. He's gonna go celebrate Christmas Mass. I said, pope, they're coming out. What? Where? And he says, come on, let him out. He uses your exit. And I said, when? He says, now. So I go over, and you know, he's locked in. You turn the key, he opens the door himself, but you unlock it, and then you step back. And all I could do is just put my uniform straight. And I stood there, and the door opens, and this warm, beautiful, orange red light came in from, of course, the hallway in his apartment. And in the door frame stands this guy in the whole white. You know how the Pope looks in a whole white thing with his little white hat on? And when he was interested in you, John Paul, he would. Is he interested in something? He tilts his head like this. He tilts his head. He looks at me and says, hey, you're new. I've never seen you before. What's your name? And I say, well, you know, my name is so and so. I'm from Lucerne. And then he comes close and he wants to shake my hand, and he grabs my hand, and then he comes closer and he looks at my eyes and my cover blue. He says, this is your first time away from. From home for Christmas, isn't it? Oh, boy. That was the wrong thing to say to me. Trade it. And here's like, this tough bodyguard, like, tears coming down, and he took one hand and the other hand, my elbow, and he pulled me in, and he looked me straight in the eye and he says, you know what, Andreas? Well, I, for one, want to thank you for the service and for the sacrifice you're doing tonight. I truly appreciate what you're doing for me tonight, and I'll pray for you during Mass as I celebrate Christmas Mass tonight. I cannot tell you in that moment, I just passed 15 guys. There were 20 guys standing behind me before. These are all my buddies, okay? I live with these guys. Not one person said a thing. And then the guy that I'm supposed to be, the fly on the wall, that he's just passing by, he noticed me. And he didn't just notice me, he noticed me, you know, because that sadness that was from that same place of this longing, of this being insecure, of this being and all, you know, we all. It doesn't matter how old we get, you know how you know and you feel like you're your parents kid. And there's a, there's a sweet feeling about this that never goes away your entire life. And that's where this is. And this man noticed that and reached out to this and comforted it just as a simple comfort of saying, hey, you know, I feel your pain, I'm sorry for you too, and I just acknowledge you. It only later on occurred to me that hey, that was in 1986. So that right at that time, that was the height of the Cold War that he, as one of them fought, which three years later the whole thing would be resolved in a positive way. And he had a lot to do with that. There were tremendous tensions within the church. There was actually a schism that happened a year afterwards with a breakaway group. And he started to have some of his own issues with his health and everything. Yet here, the leader of a billion Catholics notices this little 20 year old sad kid standing in front of his door. Why am I telling you this? I'm telling you this because one day I want you to relate to that. But not from my point, but from his point. He was the boss or the manager. He was on top of the pyramid of my organization. He was the CEO, he was the manager, he was the leader or at whatever level you are. And I was just a peon. I was less than the secretary and less than the reception receptionist and less than the guy who comes and cleans your office. I'm just standing there and you don't even, you're not even supposed to notice me. But he did. And he knew everybody's name, all of the guys like me, he knew their names and he knew where I was from and he knew what my heart felt like and he knew what my longings were. And he knew about me. He knew me. And that model of how to run a company is something I want you to remember that as you lead groups now and lead groups down your life in business. I want you to remember what John Paul did with this 6 foot 9 little guy in the Vatican that night. Because that has something to do with servant leadership. And with the beginning of the solution to all these questions about what is wrong with this system. Let me talk a bit about this. So I remember that time after, you know, we go back to me being all crushed and frustrated with this, with this experience with business and I started to think, what is the solution for this? I went to, I thought that one of the solutions could be business strategy. Maybe the strategy was wrong. I mean, it's a valid point. So I joined a group, a established consulting firm called the Monitor Group. The Monitor Group is a group of Harvard Business School professors who have a consulting group, and the most famous of them is Michael Porter, who came up with this whole competitive advantage idea. Well, they have a whole company and I joined them and I ran one of their subsidiaries that specifically focused on business strategy in difficult, in uncertain environments. So where you couldn't count, it's in a way, what I did with software. It's an uncertain environment. There's no law on your side. There's no. I mean, if Microsoft wants to sit on your chair, then either you get up or they'll sit on top of you and there's nothing you can do. It turns out then that more and more this, this moved into business strategy in emerging markets because that there's a strong parallel with startups here and business strategy in the United States in the uncertain markets, which is high technology and advanced technology and business strategy in markets that are very insecure for other reasons because maybe there isn't a government there to really help you, or maybe they don't want to help you and so on. It's the same kind of strategies you would need to compete in business for that. But I went in there to find out is it the business strategy? And I ran that company for a while and I did see that there's a lot of, you know, with competitiveness, there's a lot of. There's a lot to it that with a good strategy you can really. And the process of good strategy, you can really be more honest with yourself about why are we doing this and how are we doing this and are we creating a competitive advantage that helps us win in the market that goes beyond trying to cheat or take on fair advantage of things. So that's certainly. There's something there. And I found some very good answers there. But eventually I came down to think that I read more and more about what John Paul had to say. Because when I used to stand there next to him, I'm there anyway. I might as well listen to what he has to say. He influenced me during that time that I was with him. First with this personal interaction, but then for me, learning to meet this guy as a person, as a somewhat uncategized Catholic or Christian, I wasn't practicing anything that when I saw this guy, he had whenever I talked with him and I, you know, that longing, he quenched it with his answers, his discussions quenched it. I didn't know what it was. But when he was around, I felt that that was that. I felt meaning. I felt happiness, contentment. And I started to think about what this could be. And back then I would talk with him and he would say, well, of course, this is my faith. I believe in Jesus Christ. And my faith is not a framework. It's not an idea, it's not a movement, It's a person. And I know you sitting here listening to me, how cliche that can sound. But I just challenge you. Look, I just challenge you to try to take one further step on this. And just as soon that some. That this might be right. I'm not saying you have to take the full step, or so I'm saying, what if it's right? What if this is true? Try to meet some people who practice their faith. What I ended up feeling with this John Paul is that as I saw him there when he started to pray, I felt differently. I didn't pray, but he prayed. I felt differently. I said, first I thought, the guy's faking it, but how can he fake it and make me feel differently? And I started to. I just remember clearly the thought of looking at this guy and saying, you know what? Whatever that dude has, that's what I want. I want it like, whatever he has, that's what I want. Because it was the answer to this. What's it called? You know, it's both. You know, as a human person growing up, I know you feel inferior. I know you feel fear. I know you feel, like, unsure about where you are or do I belong here half the time. Let's admit it, we feel like a fraud sitting somewhere saying, hmm, you know, if people only knew who I really am, then the whole cover is going to blow up. That is all something that this man didn't have. And he would all coach us or talk to us about how to solve that and take that away once and for all, that you'll never have it again. But it's a process and it takes diligence like any other muscle. Like, if you're an athlete, if you don't do the exact movement to get the exact muscle, that muscle is not going to grow. And so faith in that sense is a muscle that you have to train. But boy, if you train that muscle, you can increase your life's happiness without bounds and irrevocably so. I heard him talk about work, for example, and he said things like, see, this only made sense to me after the crash, not before the crash. But he said, you know, when you look for Work. You go out of school here and you start to look for work. Don't make one mistake. Don't just work for money. That's silly, because you'll be unhappy about it afterwards. Because work is something that we are made for. Work is in that sense. If you think back at the Bible with Adam and Eve and everything and how everything was so perfect before the fall, and then after the fall, you sin and then you fall. And so this is in a sense a metaphor, but it's a very valid metaphor. Remember that work existed before the world fell apart. So first God made the world and, and said, hey, you, come here, look at this, help me build this. I'm giving this. I went this far. Now it's your turn. What are you going to do? And so work is our participation in this. So what he says, so this is a very important part about you thinking about your career and you thinking about your life and work. Life is that he would say that when you work, you don't just make more. When you work, you become more. And if you work at something and you don't feel like you're becoming more, you should really stop and think about where you're going with this, because you end up being somewhere at the end that you don't want to be. Now, with entrepreneurship in particular, he had a brilliant thing to say. Some of the most beautiful metaphors, beautiful images that I heard in my life came from him talking about this. He would speak about how entrepreneurship is co creation. He will take you as the Adam or the Eve and come to you and say, you know what? I didn't finish this. I didn't finish the world. So now I'm inviting you, you start a company and make something out of nothing. Remember how I said we made software from something out of nothing? There is only one being in the world who can do this to make something out of nothing. We, we're material beings, we can't do that. So when you do something out of nothing, which by the way, is like creating a child to make something out of nothing, God is there. You can't do it without God because God is the creator. So now he makes us in his image and says, hey, create with me. I'm going to give you this brain. You think of a really good business idea and then you make it and you become the creator and then you be the steward because you're gonna crown my, my creation that I've already created, a whole garden I'm giving you, I'm gonna make you the chief gardener Are you with me? Of how beautiful this is. And this is specifically for entrepreneurship. And then get some people around you and get them to sign on with your idea and get them to understand your vision of how beautiful you're gonna make this garden. And then together, you become my image of being creative in the world. But, you know, when I create, God would say, I don't create to destroy. I create for life. Just like I made you. I didn't make you to die. I made you to live. So when you make a product, don't make it a product of death. Make it a product of life. And don't destroy things as you go along. You can't make something in the garden and then spill stuff all over the rest of the garden so that nobody else can use it anymore. That's not a steward, man. He also started to talk about poor people. This is. Now I'm moving into the next segment of my talk. I started to work more and more with helping to alleviate poverty. I don't even really like that term, helping alleviate poverty, helping create prosperity. That's what I like. Because you see, just a quick aside, if you. When. When I learned how to drive in Switzerland. You know how. You know, Switzerland is a very mountainous country and with a lot of snow and ice. And so when they teach you how to drive, you have to take an ice driving test so that you have to get the car out of control and then try to get the car back into control, because that happens so often that you should. You have to do that. You know what the trick is? Why is it that if I drive down the road and isn't that the classic, there is one tree there, nothing else. One tree. I lose control of my car. Guess where the car is going to land. You know why that is? Any idea? It's because you're looking at it. The key when the car gets out of control is to look at where you want to go, not where you don't want to go. Because you think you have no control. Truth is, you have control. So the whole course. The whole objective of this course is to make you look at where you want to go and refuse the darnest you can to look at that tree, because otherwise you're gonna hit it. What does that have to do with poverty? Well, it has to do with poverty. Saying, solving poverty. That's the tree. No, I want to create prosperity. That's where I want to go. It's a small difference, but it's important. It's fundamental. What are we trying to do? Here we're trying to create prosperity. And I don't mean this just in the terms of money. The other thing he would say is, you know, if you look at the aid mentality today, if you're poor and you read what we're saying and what the world is saying about poverty and poor people, you end up thinking that you're a problem that needs to be solved. You see what I'm saying? We behave and our culture has an attitude as if poverty or as if poor people are a problem. I have never yet met a person in my life that is a problem that needs to be solved. There's people you can help, there's people you can work with, but there's no people who are a problem that's undignified, that violates the person's dignity. And we have a whole society who's looking at a whole continent, let's say, in Africa, as a problem. Africa is not a problem. Africa is a place with unfulfilled potential. You know, one thing that I always remember, I was, you know, I was 20 years old in the Swiss Guards and I sucked at school, okay? Before I went there, I was a terrible student. I. My self image or my confidence, if it was a flower, it grew the other way. John Paul would repeatedly show me that he had this huge confidence in me, saying, if you'd only know the greatness that you were created for. I just, you know, I see height, I see wonderful innovation, I see opportunities for excellence. You are created for excellence, man. The things you're going to do in your life, it's amazing, with all the opportunity that God blessed you with, you are going to go like a shooting star. And the shooting star goes upwards. Now, don't get me wrong, he also had certain limitations on this in saying, and I know you can live like this. So to live according to these, to the gardener's rules of saying, if you want to flourish, you can't take the easy way out and be drunk every Friday night. You know, after a while, that's going to come and haunt you. That's a truth. If you do this, you're going to live with it afterwards. You have to be responsible with your body, with other people's bodies. You have to be responsible as the gardener to create products for life and not for death. But he always had every conviction that I could do it. He was like a coach, not like a critic. You know how the coach, many guys here or girls here are probably in sports, this being Notre Dame. But you see your coach, the one thing as much of a pain that the coach can be. The one thing you know is they believe in you. Otherwise you wouldn't be on the team. Well, you are on the team. You're on God's team and he has every confidence and gives you everything you need to succeed. But it's not like there won't be any tests and it's not like it won't be tough because training and training going through the coaching session is going to be tough, but you can do it. And that has to do with life, with all your aspects, with your relationship and with entrepreneurship in particular, that you have to believe that this is possible and the the way goes upward. Apply this to poverty. We deal with poor people as if they were dumb. I want you to see how much we create special markets for the poor which means in a sense that they can't cut it. Well, I tell you, I've worked with entrepreneurs in Africa for the last 10 years and they are any bit as smart and as innovative and as go getting as any entrepreneur I've worked with in the United States, hands down. I can show you. We have a program that we call Pioneers of Prosperity. Go on my website sometime and go check out. It's sevenfond.org we have this pioneers of Prosperity competition where we go, we also do this in the Caribbean, in different parts of Africa and Latin America, Central America and so on. And we go and we say we want to find the best entrepreneurs here. I'm not talking about business competitions, business plan competitions. I'm talking about a five year old profitable business that has potential to scale because you know, scaling the company is what helps create prosperity because that's where the jobs are. That's where you really start to create wealth and prosperity. Nothing against business plan competitions, but that's where I'm, that's where I think it's at these small and medium sized companies we find these Pioneers of Prosperity we call them and if we do these competitions and they come together and they compete like at a VC level, we will give the winners $100,000 of an investment into their company and then six runners up $50,000 or so, which makes a difference with them but they can't find any other investment. Let me show you something quickly about how of where I'm coming from with this in this issue of, of wealth creation. If you look at the United States or any. So if this is the size of the company and this is how many companies, so this is the size and this is the numbers of companies so if you're looking at this in any G7, let's say it looks like this. And you can set these up in a simple way and call these micro SME and mnc. Does this make sense to everybody, these terms? Research at Harvard shows, and this is a few years old, but it's the same today, even if it changes a little bit. The difference is so large that here's my point. If you go into a country that is what's considered poor, so that we measure that again, we measure that with $2 a day. And I just don't measure people with dollars. I come up with a better. Remind me to tell you what the definition of poverty should be. It shouldn't be in dollars. So these companies, you will find this, You see this here's where you have the microfinance effect. And here you have the MNCs who come in and do rent seeking. So they come in and take natural resources out of the ground or out of the air or whatever have you. Or they come like Nestle or. So they come and sell their wares and in essence take the profit with them. You know, it's not, they're not local companies, so they come, these multinationals. There are more multinationals. Anybody who's traveled in emerging markets will, will see that any large company, you'll know them. You go into Uganda, you know the big companies there, that's, that's scary because there's more of them. And then there's like the mom and pop shop and, and most of the time even just the mom shop or not only the pop shop, which is very, very small. And the microfinance is a huge bubble, if you wish. Who's going after them? The downside with that is again that microfinance is a brilliant idea. Eunice deserves a Nobel Prize for this. But today microfinance is used as consumer credit. That's the dirty secret of microfinance. It's used as consumer credit. So if microfinance loans come into a country and people buy TVs with it, you know, something is wrong and something needs to change. But nobody wants to talk about that. So this here is called the missing middle. That's what my focus is and what I want to talk about most. These SMEs are not around. Why are they not around? What do they need? What does an SME need most of all to really grow. Small and medium sized enterprise? Good question. So it's a company that has at least 10 people and up to, let's say 500 or 900 people. In order for that company to really grow. What do they need? I'll tell you what they need, because I used to run those here. And you know where they go to here in the US to get that money? This is what they need. They go to the bank. If you don't have a revolving credit line at a bank in the United States as an SME, you're out of business. It's one of the big issues we're having right now with the banks being tight that kills SME companies. And they need banks and investment equity and loans. But let me tell you something about Africa. There's these three numbers I'd like you to remember. Africa as a continent has 12% of humanity. 12% of all people live there that are alive today. 29% of all the aid in the world goes to Africa. 29%. So if you give a dollar, 29 cents of that goes to Africa. And of all the investments, the foreign direct investment, so the kind of investment that goes from one country to the other country, which is a bit of a risk investment, 1.4% of the world's foreign direct investment goes into Africa. You know what that story tells you? These three numbers tell you something. And they speak again to this issue. Poverty or poor people are a problem and we have to solve them. Solve them. That is a bunch of baloney. If we would just start to. If you look at these numbers and you look at this next to it, it becomes very clear where the issue lie and what we need to do to fix it. What we need to do is we need to start to take each other as fully human beings. We need to show dignity to each other and say, I'm the same as you. I'm the same as you. Just like we do business here in the US I need to say, hey, you have a good business plan? Show it to me. Oh, that's pretty good. I'll put a couple hundred thousand dollars into that, but. But then you're going to have to perform. And I need this and that, and I want checks and I want to see what's going on. And I want a return on investment that is higher than something else I could do with this money that's taking each other for full. So John Paul would say that the root of the problem of poverty is that we don't take each other as full, that we look down on certain people as poor and we almost look at them as something separate. And in a specific way this gets manifested. And that's the definition of poverty. That he described, he said, don't measure poverty with a dollar a day or $2 a day, because that's demeaning. You don't want your life to be measured with $2, even if it's now your student. It might be 50 bucks, but are you worth 50 bucks? That's stupid. Being poor is the state of living without being integrated. Or let's say being poor is to be excluded from networks of productivity and exchange. Being poor is to be excluded from networks of productivity and exchange. Think about this. This money flow is a network of productivity and exchange. And this theologian, he's a philosopher. And this Pope over 20 years ago said, and I heard them, poverty is to be excluded from networks of productivity in exchange. And if you want to fix that and you want to bring people's prosperity up, you need to integrate the poor into your networks. They need a place at your table, not the, oh, there's a table in the kitchen. Why don't you go over there? Well, you know, the big boys are over here. And then you can have this other market which is for you. No, our networks of productivity in exchange. Ask your parents, ask yourselves how much of your investment is in Africa. And I don't mean your charitable investment, because I know a third of it is there. I want to know how much of your real investment is in Africa, because that shows what you think of Africa, because everybody has a heart for the poor. The question is, do you have a mind for the poor? Do you know what it takes to create prosperity? And if we know how that was created here in the United states, namely through SMEs and efficient markets and efficient financial markets and working markets and competition, then we know it can happen over there as well. But the last thing they need is another middle aged white guy like me to go over there and tell them what to do. This is not a kindergarten. So if you're thinking about going and saying, I'm going to save the world, I'll go to Africa, don't, don't. Because that's not what they need. How much experience do you really have? Can you cut it in the market where the money is around? Well, I won't let you go to Africa until you can say yes to that. And then I'll let you go to Africa if you start a company there. But they don't need one more guide running around the village trying to tell everybody what to do. That is the meaning and it is wrong. I put all of this. How much more time do I. See? I wrote this chapter in A book called in the River Day Swim. If you're at all interested in economic development. And you know, we need economic development. My company, OTF Group, which was this Monitor subsidiary, we had projects in Canada and the U.S. i mean, we just did economic development. How do you bring the SME sector up? And so this applies to everywhere. Check out this book called in the river they Swim. And what I love about this. So my business partner and I started to write this book. And, you know, first you write this book with all of these theories in there and everything, and I fall asleep reading my own writing on this stuff. I mean, this has no way to bring a story across. But I bet you that with my, with my presentation today with my life in it, talking about my life, you will understand, you will remember the SME middle, the missing middle, and you will remember the 29, the 12, 29, and 1.4%, because it's integrated into the, into a life story. And so we wrote this book in the river they Swim and asked every one of our major, any one of our employees and then some of our major customers, like Kagame in Rwanda or Ashraf Ghani in Afghanistan, which are some of the countries we were in, or Luis Alberto Moreno from the, from the myth, to write their stories as well, but to write about their life. And then how did, what did you find out that worked, but based on your life, not about. Don't hide behind, you know, all this is serious. This. You know, I'm just going to talk, you know, about this in a vacuum. Well, if you only talk about it in a vacuum, then it has to be a lie to begin with because you can't relate it to your life. We're talking about prosperity here, about people living, breathing, you know, dying, trying to create a better life for their children than they had. And so I wrote two essays in there. One is called My Faith in Prosperity, in which I write about how can I be a Catholic capitalist if I would write a title again? You know, I don't like the word capitalism too much because Marx came up with that. And you don't let a guy who doesn't know what he's talking about give the title to the Other System. But, you know, it's sort of, you see how both starts with a C. I sort of thought it was, you know, and my faith in capitalism sounded good to me, but in there, I talk about the free market and the competition and so on. And how do I put that together with my Christian faith? What are the basics of my faith that apply to this kind of freedom, to dignity and so on. And so I write that in there. The other, the other essay I wrote is called A Mind for the Poor, which takes that very analogy about everybody has a heart for the poor, but might not. But most people don't have a mind for the poor, which actually I want to credit to Father Sirico from the Acton Institute, which is right here in, up ahead above you in Michigan in Grand Rapids. Brilliant guy. I heard him say that first. But in any case, I write in there about this because I took some classes at a theology. In a theology course about how to minister in a parish to people where something terrible has happened. And they're saying that you have to be care, you have to be different. You have to differentiate between sympathy and, and empathy. And when something really terrible has happened, like somebody lost their child and they're so out of it that you're afraid they're going to hurt themselves, you are allowed to say, you know what, I'm going to send somebody home with you. And they're going to, you know, just to make sure. And they're going to help take care of the other kids for a while and things. And you actually enter into their life and you take over some stuff that is called sympathy. You take over, you make their problem your problem. That's okay under one condition that's very temporary. Five days, 10 days. But it's very short, long term canceling. This is called crisis canceling. Crisis counseling, you can go in and take over. You're afraid the person might hurt themselves or hurt somebody else or the kids might get hurt because the parent is not attentive at this point or cannot be long term. You have to. First of all, the person who does the short term counseling is not allowed to do the long term counseling because there's too high of a danger that this person becomes codependent. That I like it so much that I'm their redeemer. And they like it so much that I make all the decision that this becomes a very unhealthy relationship. So you have to move from sympathy to empathy by number one, exchanging. The counselor can't be the same person. Different person comes in and this person will act in empathy, which means I walk with you, but I am not lifting a finger. Like I'm just gonna help you reflect. Say, did you ever think about this? What do you think are the patterns that led to this? And what do you think? How do you think this child wishes you would behave now with the other children you have at Home. And so. But I don't do anything. I just, I'm just with you. Can you see how that is a longer term and it's much healthier to develop. And you can also see why the first person can't do that. Now apply that to economic and humanitarian development. Haiti gets struck by an earthquake and all hell breaks loose over there. America goes in there, takes over the airport to make sure that stuff gets in and everything. Good decision, bad decision, Good decision. Sympathy. People are dying. You just need to go there. Whatever the Marines or whoever has to go to, just get these airplanes in there. They need water, they need blankets, they need food. Do it. How long should they do this for? Are we still there? Yes, we are. We're there. Two years later, do we ever leave? And I don't mean we as in America, but I mean the world. The UN look at some of the places we've been at. And we stay. First of all, we stay. And second of all, after people start and they're starting to have some normalcy there again, the same guys who came to hand out water bottles are now trying to help you build a company. You see how this person cannot go from sympathy to empathy because that's a dysfunctional relationship that screams codependence. That's what happens when you make your career in poverty of alleviation. Because then poverty becomes your business. And of course then more poverty means more business. I wrote all this and, you know, I just love to be here and I would love to talk to you for 10 more hours. I put all of this, if I think back at when I met John Paul At 20, I left her at 22, 23. Now that I see back what over my career and over that experience there and being finally able to integrate what I have learned, the lessons from him and the lessons from the market and the ups and downs and the great stuff and the not so great stuff. I wrote down a book. I wrote a book with nine lessons in it. I wasn't consulting before, so I just can't write a book without that kind of thing with nine lessons in it that I wish somebody would have taught me when I came out of school. And so I would like to recommend to you. I called the book the Pope and the CEO and it just came out last week. And I want to recommend it to you for two reasons. There's two things in here that I think can sincerely help you. You know, I love these. I love self help books. I really. I'm a sucker for them. I love Stephen Covey genius guy. One problem. Whenever I read that book or any self help book, they always have one assumption in it. They assume that you know what you want and then they help you to get to the goal. You know what my problem was? I didn't know what I wanted. It's the same with the career. How do you want me to make a career decision? I don't know what I want for breakfast. Leave me alone. Talking about what you want me to do for the rest of my life. I don't know. Stephen Covey 10 times. If I don't know what I want, you can't help me get there. Well, this book is my sincere effort to help you figure out what it is that you want and who you are and why you're here. Because once you know that, getting there is going to become a lot easier. And I think once you figure that out and you get there, you will become a leader. Look at the history of your school, actually, you are becoming leaders. And I think that what John Paul to me epitomizes is the servant leader. And so the book has probably about 30 points in there about what it is and what it means to be a servant leader. And I do all this with exercises at the end of the book. I mean, this is a book you can read in two or three hours, but at the end of every chapter I actually ask you questions to write this stuff in because I really want you to get to the point to get something out of it and not just feel good for a half an hour while I'm waxing on about some problem. But I put this in there both to help you figure out what it is you want and then to figure out how can I be and what is different about a servant leader versus a leader who's just at the end, in a sense does what I did of thinking like I am God's gift to the world and this is all about me. So hopefully I can, with my book, save you some of the troubles that I had in my life. God bless you, Please. Thank you. I didn't pay him to ask that question, but I would, because don't get me wrong, microfinance is a genius invention and a very needed thing, but it's not a silver bullet. There is no silver bullet. And microfinance is great, but we need it only to this point. What we need is the main activity in here. So if microfinance would go down the river and, and start to make loans of 200,000 to $2 million, we would start to get into the area of things that help. So I think with microfinance it's so see the system in a way created. On the one hand you have brilliant microfinance institutions with brilliant microfinance loans. But so much money came into this. There are billions and billions of dollars in microfinance, much more than is needed. And so they end up making personal loans, consumer loans. And that's, that's the death of the whole. I tell you, in the next 10 years this is going to blow up. And they're saying, oh, they're doing consumer loans so they'll never be able to pay this back. And then the whole thing is going to get a bad name because of a few bad apples. It comes back to this because they're not servant leaders, they're just trying to make more money without actually figuring out what are we trying to do here. And if you put so much money into this until people use it for consumer credit, you've made a mistake. And I think that's happening. I'm against private equity at this point. It's a little technical, but at this point I'm against private equity because private equity assumes that you have an exit market. And if you don't have an efficient exit market, private equity is like money given away. And also in our research we found that most companies, the successful companies we found in emerging markets are family businesses. And they're family businesses because when you have a family business, you make a decision for your grandchildren, which is actually long term decision making and foregoing short term benefits for long term benefits, which is a very healthy thing. If you give equity into that business, you're disrupting the very thing that makes them successful right now. So I'm all for loans and we're actually, if you go on my website and so on, I'm starting to create a loan fund like that just because I feel this is such a great business opportunity. I'd rather just do it myself. Yes. So my, my website is sevenfont.org and then the book website is the popeandtheco.com and I have these little moo cards here if you, if you like that have the, that have the book on there and, and yeah, and then Laura, of course. And he knows it, knows me. And so if there's anybody who wants to be in touch, that should be fairly easy.

If you want to have some contact information, just mvoga1nd edu and just tell me what you want and I will get you his information and connect it.

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Thank you very much.

Thank you thank you all.