OFB Community Mailing Lists

[Norbert Bollow]

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Tim Young <Tim.Young at LightSys.org> wrote:

> The main concept seeming to be that they have a for-cost service in
> the USA and the proceeds from that go to cover the cost of supplying
> that same service to ministries.

I believe that this is a perfectly fine concept... for this type of
business, the "bottom line" would not be measured in terms of how much
money you make, but rather in terms of how much support you manage
to give to ministries.

However I see a big limitation in that this concept seems to be
limited to services which (1) can be provided profitably in the
USA, and which (2) are of significant benefit to ministries.

In addition, this concept seems to be limited to people with good
connections to rich countries like the USA.  What I'm primarily
looking for is business methods which will work anywhere, including
poor "third world" countries, so that brothers in those countries can
become a blessing to their local churches and communities through
following my example.

> But none of them seem to have a clue about the business side of
> things.

Sounds like they need to hire a coach.

Shameless plug:  I've taken some training in personal and business
coaching, and I'm willing to provide three months worth of business
coaching (in each month, three telephone coaching sessions of between
45mins and 55mins plus email support in between) "pro bono"
(i.e. without charging or imposing any other kind of obligation on the
coachee) to any missions-minded brother in Christ.

Here's my business rationale behind this offer of pro bono coaching:
I need to have a high level of competence for business coaching in the
company which I'm going to start because the company needs to have 
"business intelligence" in each of its target markets.  The standard
way of getting coaching and business strategy consulting is to hire
coaches and consultants outside the company.  There are good reasons
for that (you get advice which is based on a broader range of business
experiences than what you get when you listen only to the business
gurus within your company) but this standard approach is clearly not a
good idea for the business that I'm going to start, because I don't
expect to be able to find a consulting company anywhere which has
significant expertise in the area of Free Software businesses which
are based on Kingdom of God righteousness.  Hence NoLockIn AG (that's
the company name which I have in mind) needs to have in-house
competence for coaching and business strategy consulting (specifically
for businesses which are based on principles of Kingdom of God
righteousness rather than greed), and to achieve a high level of
competence in this area, it is important to have experience with
advising as many different businesses as possible.  Hence the offer of
pro-bono business coaching.  This will remain limited to
missions-minded Christians (when in the past I provided business
coaching to people with a more selfish perspective on life, I got the
impression that I wasn't doing the right thing) and to three months
(as a rule of thumb, three month is a minimal reasonable duration of a
coaching relationship if you want to see the coachess achieve some
meaningful results before the end of the coaching relatinship).  If
the three months of pro bono coaching work out in a mutually
satisfactory way, NoLockIn AG will offer further coaching at a "fair
costs" rate (computed as total cost of the coaching department of
NoLockIn AG including decent "middle class" salaries to all coaches in
the "coaching department" of NoLockIn AG devided by the total number
of coachees).  NoLockIn AG will not seek to make a profit from
coaching services (the profits will come from selling Free Software
related services); the benefits to NoLockIn AG from providing these
coaching services will be in the areas of general goodwill towards the
company, business networking with these coachees, and increased
competence of the "coaching department" of NoLockIn AG because of
greater experience.

> With that as a backdrop, I will respond in a more regular fashion to your
> email.

Thank you so much!!!

Blessings,
Norbert.

- -- 
Founder & Steering Committee member of DotGNU, see http://dotgnu.org/
Free Software Business Strategy Guide   --->  http://FreeStrategy.info
Norbert Bollow, Weidlistr.18, CH-8624 Gruet (near Zurich, Switzerland)
Tel +41 1 972 20 59        Fax +41 1 972 20 69       http://norbert.ch
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