The Inspiring Better Business Plan is something that keeps evolving as we are faithful in taking the next steps.  On March 28,2020 we share the plan as we see it.  By Gary Shotton #000355

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IBB Plan Evolves

By Gary Shotton

Hello I’m Gary Shotton and I’m here as a part of Inspiring Better Business and I’m going to talk about a plan for IBBTalks as it unfolds period. Well some people head out in something like this non-profit called Inspiring Better Business,  IBBTalks and you think way right down this master plan and we’re going to follow phase 1, phase 2, phase 3, phase 4 and we end up in our ultimate objective but frankly that’s not how I function or how I function with this. I have felt God lead us in a particular direction and when we’re faithful with that particular step and we take that step then he unfolds and gives us more information and it starts to become clearer and clearer as we move down the things we’re already faithful in. So the first things that I felt important was to create content that would be the lessons. The 8 minute or eight to ten minute lessons called IBBTalks, the talks passion fashioned after TED talks. We have about 350, 360 talks on our website and continually adding to that. The first ones I knew no one was listening and somebody advised me and said just keep teaching, build content, put them on your website and keep going no matter if no one’s listening or not. That took some faith. Then we rolled into the reality that just the talks are not good enough, we have to have something more substance to that and that you’ve revolved into what we call Peer Mentoring Groups and we have now about 15 mentors that are from the developing nations, from the Tulsa metro area from the U.S. reaching in and talking to the peer mentoring groups in foreign countries. Oh that’s a great step because now we’re not just putting material out, where they’re talking with them weekly give them instructions and helping them through questions and answers and talking points. That’s was revealed, that wasn’t clear when we started. Now we’re at another point we’ve come to the conclusion that we need more, we need more like a curriculum. Something that is more definitive, clearer, here’s the steps you would take to reduce poverty. That’s what we’re really attempting to do. We had a talk about eradicating poverty but I don’t think that’s going to happen because there’s always people that are going to be in poverty and actually the scripture talks about the poor will always be with you but we can reduce it and we can reduce it in individuals lives and if we did reduce the poverty in a person’s life and they get on their feet then we start reducing that in a community and then in a community maybe in a state and in this nation and we can actually make an impact and change a nation. That’s what we’re after. So as we had a wonderful connection in the country of Tanzania, Mr. Eliya and he is reaching into the schools and colleges and they’re very interested in this material that we have and we started talking about a curriculum. Well, at first we were thinking along the line of this would be a class at the college and the class at the University and then how would this be and it came clear that this is not going to be a typical academia type of class where you have a big textbook and you have a professor that’s knowledgeable about this and they are teaching this material and you have tests and you fill in the test. Frankly that hasn’t worked for entrepreneurship and I’ve never known if it worked for entrepreneurship. The college course typically is for helping people get a job in a large company or get a skill set so they can get a welding job or a skill set so they can work at the bank you know that’s what colleges and tech schools are about. We are a little bit different than that. We are not teaching the one, two, threes, we are really conveying the idea, it’s more caught than taught. Once you grasp the idea of being an entrepreneur and identify yourself as an entrepreneur then we are here to help you in that. But how would we build a curriculum, we are into that. Would this change totally in three weeks? Well, it’s going to be fun to look back but at this moment we’ve determined that rather than have a full-fledged course, let’s say for the university or high school, we will continue on with our peer mentoring groups but at the college and the university. That causes the students to choose, to select, to be a part of this and put some effort on their part to join to, be there, to be involved and to be a committed. You see, it’s one thing for us to commit to help them but if they’re not committed to receive back are, we benefiting? And we are also going to make the curriculum in what we call extremely; the concept is more. This is going to be a very slim skeleton, a very slim structure with very little need for just a page of note books full of translation because it’s going to go from English to Swahili, English to French, English to other languages. So we are not going to be bogged down with huge volumes of translations and textbooks and tests but we are going to convey a key point and then we are going to use what we have already recorded, the speakers, the lessons from across the world that will be first-hand knowledge on the subject. Now, please don’t take this wrong but many university professors are not even close to understanding what they are talking about in the world of today’s business. Today’s business is evolving on a regular basis and especially in a capital society like the world is becoming. A professor that’s just learned it from the book has never experienced that. It’s not their fault, it’s just a fact. And so we believe, with the structure of this skeleton, the concepts of the basic laws of entrepreneurship will be available then to the students that have already made some commitments, they are listening to the materials, they are involved in a group and then we are going to make this a referral of an outline so that then it refers to people like Judith a Jeweler from Kampala and her lesson that’s already been recorded and some lessons are wonderful about quality, wonderful about customer service, wonderful about don’t quit, our friend Alfred Matua, the Auto Mechanic. Wonderful lessons already recorded and we are going to pull those and maybe explain a little bit as you are watching them but we are going to let the students hear from real people, some of them in their own culture and then we are going to be able to have those translated so everyone is hearing these in their own language, reading them in their own language. And down the line we would just keep developing this and creating a structure so that will start probably at the beginning by realizing that not everyone is called to employ people. You see, a business is a business. Some employ people and some of them are just self-employed people, especially in developing nations. Ideally an entrepreneur would first have a job and then while they are having the job they start their business on the side, call it a six day, on Saturday, in the evenings and let that job be diminished in a way that their own business startup has replaced their current job. But if you’re in the country where there are no jobs, are very poor jobs you might still get a little sustaining income but we encourage people to start what would call their first necessity business, their certain first business out of use what is in your hand and start growing step by step and get some kind of stability in your personal finances and from that there is only a few people that are actually going to go on in my opinion that are called to employ people. That’s where we are headed though, that’s where we want because not everyone is an entrepreneur. Actually as a small percentage, some people are called to be managers, they are called and gifted by God to what we call the gift of administration as described through Joseph in the Bible. He was an administrator of Potiphar’s household, he was an administrator of the Egyptians and that qualified him to administer the entire wealth of the world under Pharaoh. Then other people are called to be technicians as described when God asked people to build the temple of God and he said go out and find those people that are skilled in tapestries so they can sow the current. Those are skilled in working with lumbers and those that are skilled in metals so they could coat the lumbers with gold and silver. Those are technical skills. Not everyone is called to be an entrepreneur. So unless the entrepreneur steps up though the gift of administration and the gift of technical skills is doesn’t have any place to work. So that’s our plan. It can change, we believe it’s going to change but it’s going to develop and we believe that we can go to a point that we’re going to step-by-step go into a school, just offer. Most schools around the world allow private clubs, the entrepreneurs club. In the United States they can have a leadership Club, I mean the schools in general want that. They are not curriculum based, they are group based and that’s a perfect match for peer mentoring groups. Well, that’s where we are at right now on March 28^th, Saturday March 28, 2002, 2020 I’m sorry. Looking back it will be interesting to see our next step. Thanks for being a part of this. The intention of this is to help our group really understand where we are headed as well as those around us. Thank you very much!