The best way to explain how we plan to expand internationally would be to use a model that exists, since we rely on transparency.
Starting our first pilot program in North Dakota certainly had a learning curve, but now our home base of operations has grown to nearly 40 employees. 90% of those employees are native to the tribal land. Our 3 senior leadership positions are not.
Despite wanting to target the Aborigines of Australia and Maori of New Zealand, we needed a stronger connection to ensure that our first global effort was successful. With one of founder’s strong ties to energy companies in Nigeria and having grown up and gone to school in Lagos, we knew where to begin.
We needed a very different market to show our investors that this idea works. The tribal land in the United States had a very high poverty rate and very low presence of anyone wealthy. Lagos is one of the most expensive cities in the world, but it also has a major population living in slums without access to clean water. With a booming crude oil export based economy, we knew that Nigeria had the potential for success. We also knew of the major challenges.
Despite our founder’s roots in Nigeria, the rest of our leadership team was Caucasian and our entire North American team was Native American. We relied on our founder’s leadership to guide us through, as the more experienced member of the executive team was not the best candidate in this situation. We were concerned that an executive level team member being a female could impact negotiations with the local energy companies and city government.
It was extremely stressful but we had a clear vision. We told them that we would be able to maximize their utility resources and improve the quality of life for the whole city, which would further attract more international business. Lagos was thriving in Nigeria, and higher on the African list, but government officials were looking for opportunities for their own global recognition. We could help them with this.
We developed a five-step negotiation process to work through this and accomplish our overall strategy of adding value to their already impressive progress.
- Preparation – Our founder with Nigerian roots thought it would be smart for the leadership team to fly into Lagos a few weeks before the meeting, in order to absorb the local culture. We had cultural consultations and spent time in the country to make it seem as though we were invested in this special place because we really were. We wanted to be able to tell stories about the amazing sights and sounds of Lagos to our energy and municipal contacts. We were entering their culture and did not want to risk offending them in any way. At the same time, we explored the slums, in order to add a burning drive and passion to our later discussions. This whole project came about as a result of shocking images and we wanted them to know that.
- Relationship Building – Before any official board room meetings, but after our initial adventures around Lagos, we scheduled some events with our contacts. We strategically planned our trip around a major soccer match in Lagos between the Nigerian national soccer team and Ghana, their fiercest rivals. We also invested a considerable amount of money to bring Hakeem Olajuwon to dinner with them. Hakeem is one of the NBA’s greatest players of all time and a local celebrity. Even politicians and businessmen are excited to see him due to his celebrity status. In 2016, a documentary called Giants of Africa was released. It focuses on a Nigerian sport executive’s efforts to launch Basketball Without Borders and help basketball grow across the continent. Many of Hakeem’s NBA friends participate in this effort and we are considering using these connections for future growth across Africa. Showing our contacts that we’ve put time and effort into building this relationship is all a part of the negotiation process, even if we haven’t stepped in a board room yet.
- Exchanging Task-Related Information – This is when we finally meet in a board room and present our initiative to the local energy groups and government officials. These are not all done at the same time, as we need to separate government utilities from private providers. We are trying to find a way to service as many people as possible. Ideally, we would end with two contracts, unless one of them are unwilling to contract with us if they know the other party is as well. Here, we will have our Nigerian founder lead the information session, where we show them that we have created a $60 million revenue team of nearly 35 indigenous individuals in the United States. Not only does this generate general revenue, it also provides more stability and security for the utility providers, due to the financing we provide to their clients. Finally, on a social side, it allows us to provide resources to the slums and improve the overall quality of living in the city.
- Persuasion – We dealt with this in North America as well. The utility companies always want as much as possible out of this. They want to collect on more of the interest that we collect from the financing opportunities. They want full transparency, and immediate numbers, pulled from the lists. We need to maintain compliance as lenders and also respect the financial information given to us from the clients. They want full access to that information. The hard bargaining usually involves more discussions about personal financial information than anything else. Since we need to maintain the compliance, we don’t mislead them. We get straight to the point and tell them, this is the law and we need to follow it. They can respond however they want, but we can’t budge.
- Concessions and Agreement – When we come to an agreement, we’ve usually made it obvious that we cannot budge on protected and personal financial information about the clients. Their cannot be a sharing of that information, but other data can certainly be shared. We will give full access to that data. The utility providers often look to have a staff embedded in our office, which may be initially accepted but will later need to be revisited and go through HR to maintain further compliance. They might also want us to drop interest rates on their clients for financing so that they don’t get negative feedback for using such an expensive third party. The socially beneficial aspect usually takes much longer to manifest, since other than the funds of the benefactors and generous investors involved, the resources to provide utilities to those who cannot access it uses the revenue from the other side of the business.
Indigenous Energy 