Today's Dreams Motivate Our Children's Future

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer.  Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” - Harriet Tubman

I recently started working with a social entrepreneur whose team is doing awesome things in the education space through an organization called The Future Project.  -  http://www.thefutureproject.org/  Unlike other educational solutions, they are not trying to reform education; they are revolutionizing education.

The approach is actually pretty simple.  Extracurricular school activities used to provide the extra motivation that helped and encouraged students to focus on their schoolwork. They got to participate in activities they could choose outside of their required classes, which made doing their required work more tolerable and even provided a framework for its usefulness.  Since in many inner-city schools extracurricular school activities have been cut by budget constraints, these incentives are a memory of the past.  The Future Project has now created a new and improved twist on extinct extracurriculars.  

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” - William Butler Yeats

The Future Project places one staff member in each school as a Dream Director (DD). The DD helps the kids come up with ideas, projects, and/or events that they are passionate about and would like to see happen in the school. The DD then puts kids together in teams and guides them in making their dream projects happen.  The ideas do not have to be complicated or expensive, and most are not.  When the kids find something they are passionate about, whatever it may be, they are more engaged in school and build self-confidence.  

Check out this video.

I always thought that education was about teaching people to fish so that they would be able to provide for themselves.  What I was missing is that if they have no hopes and dreams, they are never going to yearn to learn. The Future Projects is changing our world.

I am working with the founder of The Future Project to find ways to scale this into every school in the US and then the world.  Please share your thoughts and ideas.

“Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.” - Oprah Winfrey

Investing in a Flat World

“The ideal country in a flat world is the one with no natural resources, because countries with no natural resources tend to dig inside themselves. They try to tap the energy, entrepreneurship, creativity, and intelligence of their own people-men and women-rather than drill an oil well.” - Thomas Friedman

One of my favorite books is The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman.  When it was released 10 years ago it introduced the revolutionary idea that location doesn’t matter much anymore since communications and freight costs continue to go down while their speeds increase. So much for my real estate mantra and model “location, location, location”. This was the start of some radical new world thinking.

Since the economy tanked in 2008 and brought real estate values to all time lows, my firm has been investing in distressed real estate. Under the flat world effect, the rest of the world’s real estate markets followed suit shortly thereafter.  However, many countries in Europe did not take steps to rebound as quickly as the US, which has created many opportunities to buy assets at significant discounts to other countries. As a result, we now evaluate our new business opportunities by comparing current real estate values in the US to those of other continents, not necessarily to historic levels in the local market.

The flat world effect is also leading my investments to Brazil.  Last year my company brought American investors to Brazilian real estate deals.  Now we are focused on bringing money from Brazil to projects in the US, mainly due to a concern that their currency will be affected more by the US Feds’ eventual de-levering.

The manufacturing sector, which has not been a strength of the US for many years, has been more important to my firm recently. There is recent optimism due to very low fuel costs in the US (thanks in part to fracking) and a lower cost of labor due to extended unemployment. This effect has helped create more decent jobs in the US, thereby helping us rent apartments in the midwest and other places in the US other than the metropolitan hubs of NYC and San Francisco.

Some pretty amazing changes have taken place in the world since Friedman originally started the focus over 10 years ago. How has it affected you?

Negotiation Wisdom from Dr. Henry Kissinger

"The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been."  - Dr. Henry Kissinger

Last week I was fortunate to be part of a conversation between Dr. Henry Kissinger and Rabbi Peter Rubinstein. Dr. Kissinger shared his insight and knowledge that he acquired during his long and esteemed career, which is still happening. 

I found Dr. Kissinger's comments on negotiation extremely interesting. Some of my favorite take-aways:

• A great negotiator remembers history ... like the fact that Russia was founded in Kiev, and that Kiev remained Russian for hundreds of years.
• A great negotiator understands the goals of his counterpart. Putin is rebuilding a broken empire with considerable approval from the Russian population.
• Executive conference calls don't work.  Too many people expect their boss to win.
• China thinks of itself as a thousand years old civilization, not a country. 
• Never lose your temper or show that you are under time constraints.
• Understand your opponents' mindset. Know what their end goal is.
• The US tries to solve problems quickly.  China's leadership believes not all problems have solutions, but only lead to more problems. Therefore, China is in no hurry to take action. They just monitor how things develop over a few hundred years.

Keep Moving Forward

One 97 degree day in July a few years ago, I ran a 24 hour relay race with my 85 year old great uncle. He has actually been the inspiration for me and my brother as we have embarked on many crazy endurance events. Once you get to know my uncle, you find out he’s not superhuman or really any different than everyone else. He just doesn't stop when others stop, rest when others rest, drink when others drink, or give up when others do. The difference between success and failure is just making the decision to make your own decision, not follow the crowd. Think about this next time you have a decision point. That is what makes success happen!

"If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Future of Regional and Community Banking

I thought this was a great overview of why and how community banks are essential to the financial stability and growth of America.     The Future of Regional and Community Banking

Angels in Africa

The next Silicon Valley is Lagos, Nigeria. You would probably never in a million years think the same as you tour (or just pass by) one of the poorest, dirtiest slums in the world.  But a great industry growing out of this seemingly dead-end blight is a creative, ambitious fleet of budding entrepreneurs.  

“In investing, what is comfortable is rarely profitable.” - Robert Arnott

I had the opportunity to visit with some of these trailblazers last year at the annual Techie Entrepreneurial Nigerian Talent (TENT) conference.  Their innovation and determination impressed me so much that I immediately lay down 1 million Nigerian Naira for my favorite top three start-ups...that is, once my call finally went through to my colleague and their mentor, Gbenga Sense, Founder and President of Paradigm Initiative Nigeria.  The industrious young Lagos adults I selected to invest with are developing technologies for medical diagnosis in rural areas, age verification based on voice, and collision avoidance for motor vehicles.  They do their work in between regular power outages, massive daily gridlock, and figuring out how to pay their next smartphone bills.

“Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.” - John Maynard Keynes

In addition to the funding, we meet via Skype a few times a month so they can share ideas and strategies with each other, and get an American businessman’s perspective as well. I am grateful for what I have gained from their “sky-is-the-limit” attitudes and technological ingenuity.  I intend to apply their entrepreneurial spirit to my own business.

The world has great things to gain from the industrialism burgeoning in Lagos. I hope that more Westerners envision the same prosperity and invest with me.

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” - Peter Drucker

The Race is Won at the Finish Line

TheAmerican job market has changed. One way that Americans are tackling the lack of jobs is by putting a huge amount of energy into start-ups. This can create opportunity for some massive companies like Google and Apple, but can also result in a huge waste of time and energy for many.  One of the funds I invest with was pitched by almost one company per day last month with ideas as diverse as a new sales platform to take-on eBay, a new tequila brand (just what the world needs), and a line of pocketbooks whose differentiating factor is that they come in different colors. Few will succeed; many will not.

Even so, with all of the companies that are started on an annual basis, the ones that don't become billion dollar opportunities still have relevance somewhere.  So much time is wasted by great people working on concepts that just won’t scale into the next Instagram. Many are good ideas but have a limited market opportunity. The startup world seems to have a done great job with promoting the concept of failing fast.  Thank goodness!

As the U.S. economy continues to change into a much more entrepreneurial model, there will be fast failures (great!) and there will be huge success (great!), and now there is a place to help the middle (great!)

Check out Upcelerator.com, and please forward this to friends that are stuck in the middle.