An Icelandic Entrepreneur

THE CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD SINGS COUNTRY

Anna, Chairman of the Board

I guess that most of us won’t get too interested in that Led.  The Chairman sings country, So What? Well this Chairman is Anna Halla Emilsdottir and the Country songs she sings are about young girls driving their cattle in the annual Icelandic round-ups.  You see, Anna is the Chairman of a 6 year old family owned tourism company in Reykjavik, Iceland.  I heard her sing while a passenger in a 6 passenger van she was driving during an all day sight-seeing visit to her home town.

I ended up next to the driver’s seat and had plenty of time to learn about this small business woman and her family business.  I thought it would be interesting to talk about Anna’s successful company for my colleagues at SCORE with whom I spend a lot of time here in the States trying to help our small business people succeed in the difficult task of starting and growing a viable company.

The family part of the family business comes from the fact that Anna, her husband  and children are the owners of a Tour Bus company called Free as a Bird or FAB. Anna and her husband each have a 15% ownership interest and their children share the remaining 70 % of the Company.  The parents did this after a few years of operation because, as she said, “Money always makes trouble if there are any questions about the details”. That’s a pretty spot on understanding for a school teacher.  I know a batch of successful American business executives who could not explain the need to clarify the interests  and situation of all of the interested persons in as succinct and straightforward way.

Both Anna and her Husband work at the business as does one of their children.  Anna retained her job as a teacher in a local kindergarden and shows up when an extra driver is needed, like when a Cruise Ship with 2100 passengers and 900 crew tie up and have hundreds of folk who want to see all they can in the single day the ship will spend in Iceland.  On the day we had the pleasure of meeting Anna in her role of Tour Driver she went past the Kindergarden to open it for the day and get it running before she showed up at the pier.

I asked her what her experience was working so closely with her husband and what did her children think.  She, in her straight up manner, said it was hard at times and it was easy to have little conflicts now and then but overall things worked out as long as everyone talked it out.

Golden Falls

They started the business because her husband lost his job around 7 years ago.  He had been a Tour Bus driver and was familiar with the business, from an employee’s point of view.  They scraped up the money to buy their first vehicle, a 7 passenger VW Diesel van.  Now they have two 7 Passenger VW vans, three 17 passenger VW vans, one 43 passenger bus, one 36 passenger bus and one 6 passenger 4-wheel drive Jeep type. All look fairly new. Without digging into their situation too deeply I figure that they are doing quite well.

The more I thought about the Anna Emilsdottir/Free as a Bird story the more I realized that much of their experience in putting this enterprise together and moving it to success is not much different than what their counterpart in the States could have encountered.

Let’s look at those Icelandic experiences and see if they are that far away from the likely  experiences a successful USA enterprise might have had.

Before I start, I should tell you that the people like Anna in the world really like America and envy us for everything we have. they think we are pretty lucky to live in America and so do I.

Looking at Anna’s business; first off, getting into business for themselves wasn’t something they always planned on.  It was forced upon them because economic conditions resulted in losing a job. Sound familiar Yanks?  Then they decided to get into the business of hauling tourists around the area. How did that happen?  The husband had already driven tourists around and “knew” the business.  He and his wife did not decide to open a steam organ repair business because they liked steam organ music; they got into something with which they were familiar, not a whim or a glamorous mirage. Thank goodness that tourism in Iceland and the Cruise Ship business were in a growth mode.

The next thing that parallels the American experience was that the business was self capitalized.  No one gave them the money.  They scraped it up.  Maybe savings, maybe personal credit but, for sure, not someone else’s money started Free as a Bird.  In America over 95% of new businesses are self financed.

Doing business with family members was good news and bad news at the same time.  The Emilsdottirs were fortunate enough to react to the tough spots with enough smarts that they are still married and continue to get along with their kids.  The giving of ownership interests to the children was a very smart thing to do.  It took the whole idea of the family company business from just that, an idea, to a tangible, living entity in which success had a very real meaning for all, not just for the people who were earning a payday.

Anna kept her day job.  Not a bad idea.  In practice this is tied up with the reality of working with your spouse as much as any economic benefit it might have.  By maintaining a strong outside interest, even one that has major obligations, the family member has an identification away from the family business.
The party with the outside job is someone in a workplace, a mini society, where she or he can have pride, status and any of the other intangible values a job can provide over and above money.

My evaluation has been that the kinds of things Free as a Bird encountered and survived were not that far from what our countrymen would have run into trying to get a new business under way. We did not go into much detail because we did not have much information, just instincts and insights so you might think my reaction is off base.  If so, it is your opinion and is every bit as valid as mine.

As I re-read what I have gotten on paper I can hear my more politically obsessed colleagues muttering “Those guys must have gotten a lot of help from the government or something”. Why not say that, they say the same thing every time they see an immigrant do well here in the States.  I hate to say it but I am afraid too many Americans, even those who claim to have graduated from our finest institutions of higher learning, think that somehow it is not right for people who were not born & bred in the good ol USofA to succeed in business there.

That made me think about Anna and to figure out what kind of head start her family got by trying to build a business in Iceland.  Let’s see, the government there is at least as nit picky when it comes to licenses and permits and documentation for businesses as ours is.  That was not a plus for Anna.

Then there’s the cost of everything a business or a person needs; a lot higher there than we are paying in America whether it is a 7 Passenger VW van or a ham sandwich.  Hmm, how about taxes?  Well, the personal income tax is a lot higher there than in America.  The average person makes less per month and pays proportionally maybe twice as much in taxes.  But, but, but,,,, they don’t have to give their workers health insurance.  The government takes care of that for both the workers and the owners of businesses.  A doctor’s office visit costs about $US 6.00 and if you have to go to hospital it and the treatment are free.  People do not complain about long waits for treatment nor lousy service.  They think the health care system is just fine.

The whole place is Lava Rock & Moss

Good schools, including university are essentially free and if you lose your job you get enough to live on from the government.  (The last report I saw about the results of international tests of High School students in subjects like reading, math and science put Iceland #2 or #3 as I recall.  USA was #26 or #27.)

If you lose your job and have to take the government money maybe you will have to walk around like an old guy I saw in Reykjavik who was picking up paper with a long handled tool to earn his dole.  He didn’t look too overworked to me.

My colleagues will no doubt tell me that the Scandinavian politico/social system is, by definition, bad for people.  Don’t tell the folks in Iceland, they don’t know any better and think they are pretty well off.

All in all talking with an Icelandic entrepreneur left me with the sense that we are, by many measures well off in America and the idea of opportunity being there is still a reality and not just a slogan that pops up during the almost annual fools’ festival called Elections.  We are incredibly well off in America.  The only people who haven’t figured it out yet are mostly Americans, or so it seems.

Atlantic City Comes Back After Sandy

Atlantic City

What a Great Place It Used to Be

Old Fashioned and Modern All At Once 

Since the middle of June this year I have spent about half of my time in Atlantic City, New Jersey.  Now I know that my readers are going to be saying that AC is kind of unfashionable as a beach resort but old Joe is maybe so out of touch he doesn't know it.  Actually, as my grandkids are prone to say over and over, I really do know that AC is a thing of the past.  Why go?  It was not nostalgia, I will assure you.  What it was and is is one of those old Roman maladies, Pro Bono.  Grace has asked me to see if I can rid myself of this chronic illness but it hangs on.

SCORE is a resource partner of the Small Business Administration (SBA).  It provides free counseling to small business people or folks who are thinking of becoming small business people.  SCORE's usual place to work is in over 350 Chapters spread all over the country, like the one I belong to in Fort Worth.  The Atlantic City task is something called the Sandy Business Recovery Project.  "Sandy"???? Wazzatt?  If you were paying attention you will recall that toward the end of October last year a Hurricane dubbed Super Storm Sandy hammered the Atlantic Coast from North Carolina to Maine.  New Jersey and New York were the hardest hit.

Some Plant Life to Hold the Dunes In Place

October 2012 was 9 months ago.  If they wanted to help the business people who suffered damage from Sandy shouldn't SCORE have saddled up and galloped into town before this?  That's a really good question but clearly whoever asked it forgot that SCORE works for the SBA and the SBA is an agency of the famous Federal government in Washington DC.   Do the terms Inter Party Infighting, Gridlock, Do Nothing Congress and the Best Congress That Money Can Buy resonate with you at all? If they do you will understand why it took our intrepid Washington Patriots until late April 2013 to give SBA and through it SCORE marching orders and a few taxpayer bucks to send out a call for non paid volunteers from all over the country to go to New Jersey to land a hand counseling and advising Jersey business people about taking advantage of the myriad local, state and federal sources of aid and money out there to get their businesses running again.

When foreigners learn a bit about America and Americans one of our national characteristics that amazes and impresses them is our readiness to help our fellow men.  They, the foreigners, can't believe that we drop what we are doing and go wherever the need is without being recruited and paid to do so. They always tell me that their countrymen would be at least reluctant and at most dismissive of a call to unpaid assistance.  

So, in spite of the outrageous denizens of DC SCORE put a team of volunteers together to base out of Atlantic City to beat the street and let Sandy victims know that there are still programs and other forms of help available and that SCORE will help them find their way through the bureaucracy to take advantage of the aid that their fellow americans have put in place for them.

By the way, in this age of razor sharp minds ready to label anyone by some kind of political curseword, be advised that my dislike of the political class is not limited to the District of Columbia  version.  Assemblies and Statehouses and County Seats and City Council Chambers and Mayoral Offices have plenty of once rational politicians who are more interested in the D's, the R's and the I's that follow an elected person's name than what that person has to say.  My disdain has no initials attached.

Pardon the slight detour.  I have a hard time staying on point whenever I think of our elected officials and their entrenched employees.  Forgive me.

I will throw in a few pictures taken by SCORE'S volunteers and make a few observations on Sandy, New Jersey and the incredible resilience of our fellow Americans in future postings.

A View to the Atlantic

Hoan Kiem Lake---A Hanoi Must See

Hoan Kiem Lake

Hoan Kiem means the Returned Sword and Hanoi’s Hoan Kiem Lake bears that name because of a legend that revolves around Emperor Le Loi.  In a war with the Chinese Emperor Le was given a sword from the gods.  The sword was called Heaven’s Will and it was so infused with Divine Power that Emperor Le was able to successfully revolt against the Ming Dynasty occupiers who ruled the country.  An especially powerful god, the Golden Turtle God, lived in the lake and Emperor Le threw the sword into the lake to return it to the beneficent gods that made lifting the Chinese yoke possible.  From that time on the lake was know as the Returned Sword Lake or the Lake of the Returned Sword.

Magic Sword

There are huge fresh water turtles that still live in Hoan Kiem Lake and early in 2011 great efforts were made to aid one that seemed to have contracted some disease that I threatening its life.  A visit to Hoan Kiem Lake in the center of Hanoi is not only a must see destination but it is hard to go to Hanoi and miss it.

That's a Big Turtle

Why You Should Take the Ship's Tour

The View from the top of Borobadur

Many cruise ship passengers agonize over whether or not they should use the shore excursions offered by the ship or go it alone and make their own arrangements either on line before departing home or on the pier when the ship docks.  The calculus goes something like this:  The ship charges more than the local entrepreneur but if you are on the ship sponsored trip you can be sure that whatever happens the ship will be there for you at he end of the trip.

So, go on the cheap and take your chances on getting left behind if your car/van/bus has a flat tire/engine problem/gets caught in traffic, or, take the ship’s tour and know that  come hell or high water, the gangway will still be there, welcoming you on your return, whenever that may be.

On my last trip to Borobadur I experienced a whole new element that a passenger needs to crank into the equation.

Holland America’s MS ROTTERDAM made a port call at Semarang, Central Java.  Semarang is a middle sized Indonesian port with a history that goes back to Dutch East Indies times.  It also had some World War II history that I may cover in other posts sometime.  For the usual discriminating passenger the reason to book passage on a ship that docks in Semarang is the lure of being able to visit one of the UN’s World Heritage sites, BOROBADUR, a 1300 year old Monolithic Buddhist Temple.  It is around 60 miles up the road, up the hill, from the port.  Not too far.  Check a map for yourself.  The only problem is that, as any world traveler knows, there are 60 miles in this place and there are 60 miles in some other place.  All 60 miles are not equal.

In developing nations 60 mile of good paved road can still be a challenging distance.  That is the situation for the road to Borobadur.

Rotterdam’s busses had an additional feature that made all the difference in the world:  honest to goodness official escort of police cars complete with a three man crew, sirens flashing , lights and lighted batons waved out the windows at cars and trucks ahead.

Traffic in Indonesia is British style with passage on the left , the opposite of what people from the USA  are accustomed to seeing.  However, even the Europeans got a thrill out of our escort.  Cars, trucks, mopeds and motorcycles going in our direction were pushed all the way over to the extreme left of the roadway, usually well past the edge of the paved road.  The cars, trucks etc. heading in the opposite direction were also waved to and past the margins on the right side of the road.  There are no sidewalks but there are normally pedestrians walking on the road sides as well as businesses with goods for sale at the road edge.  The police sirens, flashers and batons forced the opposing traffic so far to the right it was a miracle that they did not run into the people, vegetables, cans of oil, advertising signs and bicycles propped against the front of the buildings.

The Difference Makers

Picture a two lane highway completely filled with traffic in both directions.  Then add a caravan with maybe a dozen 48 passenger Mercedes busses led and trailed by police cars with lights flashing and sirens screaming  cutting a hole in between the chocked lanes.  That’s how we traveled most of the 60 miles.  It would be no exaggeration to say that our busses spent more time driving down the wrong side of the road than the left hand side where we nominally belonged.

If  passengers arranged for a vehicle & driver there is no doubt that those folk would have spent the time after they got to the place at the pier where Rotterdam had been docked making arrangements to book and buy plane tickets to get them to the next port of call to catch up with the ship, their clothes and maybe their spouses.

The 8 1/2 hour ship’s excursion was taken up with 90 minutes at Borobadur, a meal and a pair of comfort stops.  Without the escort there is no reasonable way to estimate how long it would have taken but 10 to 12 hours would not be a bad guess.  The Semarang port call was only set up for 10 hours total and clearly visits to Borobadur would not have been possible.  Since that was the real reason to visit Semarang at all there would have not have been a port call.  Result? No visit, no port fees, no money spent in the local economy by ship and passengers and no time for Indonesian crew to visit with their family and friends who lived nearby.  And, did I mention, no reason to plan to have any other ships visit Semarang because the motivation to visit was literally out of reach on a normal port call schedule?

So, sometimes the logic of saving a few bucks or even more than a few bucks, doesn’t end up being the right answer.  Think about it and you will see that often the umbrella of care that the ship extends to their passengers is worth the money for a lot of reasons.

Beginnings of Indonesian Trade

800 AD Indonesian Ship Carving at Borobudur

Recognizing that statistically Indonesia can be called a poor country, that does not mean that it is a country that is without anything of value.  Far from it.  It has plenty of resources that have always been sought after by its neighbors and by people from far away.  Asians began visiting the islands that we now call Indonesia from as far back as historians kept track of the comings and goings of people.  

Nearby neighbors from the Malay Peninsula visited Indonesia on relatively simple missions; stealing whatever they needed from the villages near the coasts.  When you think about it the visits of the Malays to Indonesia were not very different from the raids Norsemen made on the British Isles or the Chinese made on the Formosans.  Raiding neighbors has been a part of how humans have always acted.  It seems that taking whatever you can from those folks over the mountain or across the strait was the basis for commerce until the neighbors got tired of getting beat up and decided to arm themselves well enough to discourage their rapacious friends.  Thus international trade was born.

The way trade developed in Indonesia had a great influence on how the country developed.  Arab traders from the Persian Gulf ventured eastward and called at ports in the Indian subcontinent,   Because commerce works best when it is two way, Indian sailors soon began voyaging to the Persian Gulf and the East coast of Africa where there were goods available that they could swap for their commodities or products.  

With the experience of trading to the west the Indian subcontinent sailors thought they could go east and be the dominant sea going force in the Indian Ocean/South China Sea area.  When they visited Indonesian islands they not only were interested in trade, they wanted to give the natives the benefit of their religious beliefs.  Does this sound familiar?  Think of the Spanish in Central and South America or the Philippines or Muslims in Turkey.  Religions are either official sponsors or behind the scenes influences of ventures to foreign lands.

Recognizing that statistically Indonesia can be called a poor country, that does not mean that it is a country that is without anything of value.  Far from it.  It has plenty of resources that have always been sought after by its neighbors and by people from far away.  Asians began visiting the islands that we now call Indonesia from as far back as historians kept track of the comings and goings of people.  

Nearby neighbors from the Malay Peninsula visited Indonesia on relatively simple missions; stealing whatever they needed from the villages near the coasts.  When you think about it the visits of the Malays to Indonesia were not very different from the raids Norsemen made on the British Isles or the Chinese made on the Formosans.  Raiding neighbors has been a part of how humans have always acted.  It seems that taking whatever you can from those folks over the mountain or across the strait was the basis for commerce until the neighbors got tired of getting beat up and decided to arm themselves well enough to discourage their rapacious friends.  Thus international trade was born.

The way trade developed in Indonesia had a great influence on how the country developed.  Arab traders from the Persian Gulf ventured eastward and called at ports in the Indian subcontinent,   Because commerce works best when it is two way, Indian sailors soon began voyaging to the Persian Gulf and the East coast of Africa where there were goods available that they could swap for their commodities or products.  

Dutch East Indies Ship

With the experience of trading to the west the Indian subcontinent sailors thought they could go east and be the dominant sea going force in the Indian Ocean/South China Sea area.  When they visited Indonesian islands they not only were interested in trade, they wanted to give the natives the benefit of their religious beliefs.  Does this sound familiar?  Think of the Spanish in Central and South America or the Philippines or Muslims in Turkey.  Religions are either official sponsors or behind the scenes influences of ventures to foreign lands.

More About Indonesia

Barong Dance: Battle between Good & Evil

The whole idea of something called Indonesia is a recent thing.  Up until the middle of the 20th Century what was there was a collection of islands that were controlled by local tribes, then rulers then European powers.  History didn’t move too fast among the islands.  After all, once you got used to the heat and rain, the place was very livable.  Plenty of fruits and plants and animals to eat.  The waters abounded with fish, shellfish and turtles.  Except for the occasional typhoon, earth quake or volcanic eruption it was easy living.  The seas and rivers were the highways for the native people.  Commerce and trade was waterborne as was the arrival of strangers from the mainland of Asia.  

The strangers came for the usual reasons; rape, pillage, looting and taking over territory.  They brought with them religions that over time replaced the local beliefs.  People from South Asia introduced Hinduism and for a time it was the dominant religion.  It was supplanted by Buddhism and later by the teachings of Islam.  Buddhism was a huge influence and remains an important element in society.  Hinduism faded in most of the islands except for Bali where it is the dominant religion until today.

Bali Culture

Those hundred or so ethnic tribes mentioned before speak 300 or 400 different languages.  Many of these languages are similar and tribes or groups living on the same island or near other tribes could conceivably communicate.  However, absent a common written language the likelihood for lively interchange of ideas and information is limited.  This need to create some sort of national tongue is why Bahasa Indonesia or Indonesian Language has been adapted as the official national language.  Bahasa Indonesia effectively is the Malay language in use in the Riau Islands near Singapore augmented with works and phrases that are peculiar to Indonesia.  This unifying language was put in place by Indonesian nationalists during the time the country was still a Dutch Colony and was officially declared the national language in August 1945 as a part of the declaration of independence  that signaled the break with the colonial masters

Remarkably, it all works.  

Some Thoughts About Indonesia

Indonesia from space

Indonesia is another Pacific island chain with a super simple name made up by early European explorers with limited imaginations. [Indo = India : Nesia = Islands]  Just like Polynesia = Many Islands or Micronesia = Small Islands or Melanesia = Black/Dark Islands.  At the same time by naming the island chain the Indian Islands they acknowledged the influence and sustained contact that traders and explorers from the Indian subcontinent had on the islands.

Generally Indonesia is described as an archipelago or major island group with 17,508 +-islands.  That number, like many statistics or numbers used to describe Indonesia is an estimate.  Since only 6000 or so are inhabited, it really does not matter much if there are 17,502 or 17,509 islands.  There are also 80 or more ethnic groups among the 240 million population.  Indonesia is actually the world’s 4th most heavily populated country and the home of more Muslims than any other country.  Some of the hundreds of ethnic and language groups have sub groups and those sub groups have sub-sub groups and on and on.  The point, if there is a point, is that the Indonesian population could not be accused of sameness or homogeneity.

Jakarta Crowd

The island chain, however many islands there are, stretches from the island of Sumatra on the Western side of the Malacca Straits ( that is the body of water that separates Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand from Indonesia) all the way down to New Guinea near Australia.  That is a far stretch.  The northern end, the tip of Sumatra, is further away from the southern part of Indonesia than Seattle is from Miami.  Or London is from Moscow.  The big difference is that what is in between those places is not land that has been occupied for centuries and which is criss-crossed by roads, power grids and established cities but by water with tropical islands covered with forests and inhabited by what could best be called tribes.

We will pick up on the general topic of Indonesia over the next few posts.  For most of us that come from European ancestors Indonesia is just another incomprehensible 3rd World place.  The Country and the people are both worth knowing and I would like to help introduce them to you.