8 BAMers Share Their Stories: What Propelled You Towards BAM?

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We asked eight people who have got involved in BAM in the last 5 years to share how they got launched and how well they landed. We asked them:

We’ll be posting what they shared in four short blogs: Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Part 1: What helped propel you towards business as mission?

We were working professionals for a long time and felt we reached a certain level of accomplishment in our career and knew it was time for a change. When we decided we wanted to move abroad, we looked at ways on how we could have the greatest impact and found that running a business can hugely benefit a community on many different levels, as well as give ministry opportunities we otherwise would not be presented with. Also, starting a business felt the most authentic way for us to truly become “immigrants” in our new home country and displayed our commitment to the locals that we were serious and in this for the long haul. – Ben and Yumi, Vietnam [have been operating a software development company for 18 months, before that they spent 10 months intentionally preparing to do BAM, 4 months in their home country and 6 months in Vietnam] Read more

Two Essential Attributes to Have in Your Team: Intellectual Firepower and Fire in the Belly

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Once a month, our panel of mentors answer your practical business questions. Send us your questions!

 

Dear BAM Mentor,

I am a co-owner in a BAM company (in Thailand) with my business partner and we are looking to add one other to our senior management team. What sort of characteristics or background should I be particularly looking for as I recruit? How should we be preparing them (or encouraging them to prepare)? No one person is going to be the complete package, so what should I focus on and is there anything you would consider a ‘deal breaker’?

~ Rookie Recruiter

Dear Rookie,

My recommendation is to find someone who brings two attributes to the table. The first is intellectual firepower. The second is fire-in-the-belly.

Intellectual firepower is the person’s ability to think strategically and find solutions to complex problems. Irrespective of the nature of work that the business will engage in, availability of startup capital or the type of organization that you plan to build, it is essential that one of your first co-workers, especially someone who will be a part of the senior management team, be a person who is full of high caliber ideas. This individual will help you make tough decisions during the early years of the business. Most of these decisions will not be black and white. The hardest decisions are those that are made in the grey areas of spending limited resources on the ever-increasing needs of the business as you start from scratch. These early decisions will set the pattern for years to come as you grow into a mature organization. In many ways the organizational culture is formed in the first couple of years of starting the business and an intellectually strong person will help you to make the best choices, and will help them take shape. He or she must have the ability to think creatively and strategically for long-term planning and then break down strategic plans into step-by-step action plans, based on what needs to be done, and when. Read more

Am I a Business Builder or Entrepreneur? Identifying Your Place in a BAM Team

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by Peter Shaukat

Business as mission is communitarian and team-oriented, not individualistic. Beyond considering the individual characteristics that BAMers need, I would then ask, “What does the business team need to have in their overall profile?”

I think of the business team in a matrix model. One axis maps character, competence and charisma. Along the other axis is the type of person or skill needed. Those types would range right from the entrepreneur, along to managers and business professionals, and then those professionals with technical or specialist skills that the business needs.

Entrepreneurs and business builders

When you start out in business you are doing everything. Theoretically that is flawed, but it’s the reality in a brand new startup. You are not going to have perfection in your team and all the right people in the various roles from day one. But you want to move along a dynamic pathway, to break out those functions into different roles as quickly as possible.

If you are going to do business as mission well, the business needs more than one person with a good idea. You can’t start a BAM company without an entrepreneur, but likewise, you can’t continue a BAM company with only an entrepreneur! Almost as soon as the company starts you are going to need other kinds of people, ‘business builders’. Read more

Questions to Consider When Recruiting and Preparing a New Team Member

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Once a month, our panel of mentors answer your practical business questions. Send us your questions!

 

Dear BAM Mentor,

I am a co-owner in a BAM company (in Thailand) with my business partner and we are looking to add one other to our senior management team. What sort of characteristics or background should I be particularly looking for as I recruit? How should we be preparing them (or encouraging them to prepare)? No one person is going to be the complete package, so what should I focus on and is there anything you would consider a ‘deal breaker’?

~ Rookie Recruiter

Dear Rookie,

You are wise to seek advice on this topic. Although business is very complex, most things such as pricing, margins, overheads, etc. can be addressed and adjusted as required. However, if you bring the wrong person into the core management team it can be disastrous. It is similar to adding way too much salt to a soup – once it’s done, it’s hard to undo and you may have to start over.

Since it is usually so hard to find someone with the right Kingdom goals it is tempting to put on your rose colored glasses, find any reasonably close fitting candidate and then hope for the best. This is always risky.

Your question is rather vague, so the first thing to do is systematically address some fundamentals. Many failures in hiring are caused by a lack of proper communication from the hiring organization towards the person being hired. The following overall factors must be addressed: detailed role definition, relationships to existing and future staff, management style, authority boundaries, incentives, performance evaluation and termination conditions and procedures. In addition, some specific items about the candidate, including the questions you mention, need to be considered; characteristics and background, is this person currently in a similar position, suggested areas of preparation and “deal breakers”. Read more

How They Got Started: 3 Different Routes into Business as Mission

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From Dream to Island Reality: Samantha

At the tender age of nine, rather than dreaming of make-believe castles and glass slippers, Samantha dreamed about living her life on a certain archipelago in Asia. After college Samantha spent a year in China teaching English then returned to the States to get her Master’s degree in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Upon graduating, she taught English for several years at high school level. Then one day God began stirring that dream from her childhood of living in Asia. After months of seeking wise counsel and pushing on doors, a plan began to take shape. True to His word, God did “more than she could ask or imagine”, doors opened for her to join an organisation that fit her youthfulness and passion. She raised long-term support, and took a survey trip. Within a short time Samantha had moved and begun studying the local language on a main island of the archipelago. She was open to God’s provision, setting no expectations on how long she would remain long-term in the country.

Three months into her language studies Samantha received a phone call from a certain small business ministering out in the islands asking if she would join them in their endeavor. Samantha had connected with this business months prior during her survey trip, hoping that God would open the door for her to join their business since their vision was the same as hers for the islands. With her teaching skills and a passion for the Islands, she immediately said, “Yes!” – believing she could do anything God called her to, including small business. Read more

A Business Man’s Journey

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Tensions Between Faith and Work

One of the great privileges of traveling and working internationally is the frequent opportunity provided by long journeys for prayerful reflection on the goodness of God and the adventure of a life walking with Him.  A few years ago, on one such long trip, I took some time to reflect on my life in the previous 7 years since becoming a Christian, in particular, on my journey towards integrating faith and work, mission and business.

I came to faith in my late twenties in the midst of the busiest time in my working life.  I worked as a strategist and management consultant in one of the leading financial services companies in the UK.  I was being stretched like never before in a senior management role, responsible for leading and implementing major organisational change in my department and at the same time completing a part-time MBA.  That God chose this time to stir my heart still amazes me.

Read more

Twists and Turns on the Journey to Launching a Business in Romania

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For Ryan Crozier, four passions remain constant: God, his wife, Romania and trafficking prevention. As a natural-born entrepreneur there have been many other passions and interests that have come and gone, but those are the ones that define his life. At age 12, Ryan fell in love with Romania on a short-term mission trip with his Dad that would change their lives forever. At 18 as a college student, the seeds for anti-trafficking work were sown as he listened to a visiting speaker from India recount the plight of children vulnerable to traffickers. His blood boiled as he listened to the woman tell stories of rescuing children from abuse. She compared their work to standing at the edge of a cliff trying to catch kids as they came off and not being able to catch them all. All Ryan could think about was why there wasn’t someone further back stopping children going anywhere near the cliff edge. It is a question that has helped shape the course of his adult life and it is the reason that today he is leading a company, eLiberare Design – a web design and development agency in Bucharest, Romania.

In 1997 when Ryan and his Dad set off on mission trip to Romania, they expected to serve and help, yet it was them who were most changed by the experience. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, it was estimated that 50,000 children were in State care in orphanages. Conditions in those orphanages were terrible, and by the time Ryan first visited Romania eight years later, thousands of children had run away and were living rough on the streets. While the kids found some measure of freedom, they also found new kinds of abuse – particularly the abuse of inhalants, many becoming addicted to sniffing glue. Ryan and his Dad volunteered with an organisation that were helping kids get off the street and into homes. Read more

Good Practices for Recruiting a Senior Team Member

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Once a month, our panel of mentors answer your practical business questions. Send us your questions!

 

Dear BAM Mentor,

I am a co-owner in a BAM company (in Thailand) with my business partner and we are looking to add one other to our senior management team. What sort of characteristics or background should I be particularly looking for as I recruit? How should we be preparing them (or encouraging them to prepare)? No one person is going to be the complete package, so what should I focus on and is there anything you would consider a ‘deal breaker’?

~ Rookie Recruiter

Dear Rookie,

Much of what you need to look for in a new senior management team member is what any business would look for: skill and experience that will add to the business. Every BAM business requires a complex set of skills and competencies and these are generally met by contributions from a number of different people working together. Be clear first on what skills the business needs, then on what skills you have in place. You can then see more clearly what skills you would want to bring in this new person you’re recruiting. The skills could be administrative, marketing and sales knowledge, financial expertise or skill regarding local language, culture and spiritual dynamics, just to name a few. But don’t expect anyone to bring everything. We all bring our weaknesses as well as our strengths to any position! Read more

10 Things That Will Help or Hinder BAM Mobilisation

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How do we multiply and scale the number of fruitful BAM companies around the world? One of our key tasks must be to envision and mobilise a new wave of would-be business as mission practitioners from every country on the planet. Some of those will come from a corporate or small business background, envisioned with a broader perspective on their skills, experiences or companies. Others will come from a non-profit or mission agency context after seeing the need for business as mission firsthand. Still others will be the next generation coming through schools and colleges, growing up with an integrated passion for business and God’s work in the nations.

There are many strategies and models for mobilising and equipping future BAMers. Whatever your strategy, here are 10 things that will help or hinder you:

1. God is at work

Perhaps our most important opportunity is that God is on the move in the global marketplace. God is at work among business people and business people are hungry for this message. Christ-followers in the marketplace around the globe are sensing God’s call to impact the world in and through their vocation. Our message must affirm business professionals and exhort them to use their vocational experience and expertise for God’s Kingdom work. Since we are co-workers with the Holy Spirit in the work of mobilisation, prayer must be considered vital work in the BAM community. We cannot have fruitful advocacy and mobilisation without this partnership between our efforts and God’s work in people’s lives. This is not another program for us to deliver, but a movement of God. Read more

What Makes a BAMer? Identifying and Deploying the Right People for BAM Companies

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Interview with Peter Shaukat

With 15 years of experience recruiting for, mentoring, and investing in BAM companies all over the Arab world and Asia, Peter has a unique perspective into Human Resources for business as mission. We asked him to share his insights on recruitment and hiring for BAM companies.

What skills are BAM companies typically looking for?

Virtually any! Management skills in various business disciplines are needed. Those with good financial management skills and experience are almost always in short supply. While bookkeepers can often be found aplenty, ‘Chief Financial Officer’ type skills are another matter. Founding entrepreneurs often lack the business building skills and experience of general management of the sort that a COO or CAO brings to the table.

Marketing and/or especially sales skills and experience are highly sought after. Often an SME-sized BAM company will have some national talent on this, but to trade well internationally they require those with expat credentials for (at least perceived) credibility, access to networks, and marketing/sales channels, etc. These are often in short supply.

BAM businesses often need specific technical and/or professional skill-sets which are particular to the business in question. For example, an environmental consulting company to the textile industry in Bangladesh needs experienced chemical, industrial or systems engineers, while a civil engineering company in Pakistan will be looking for a civil or mechanical engineer or architect. An educational business in Yemen looks for qualified teachers or other education specialists whereas an agribusiness in Iraq requires an agronomist, and so on. Read more