Brent Sobol: Helping young people learn business

No wonder, most of these are the ones who pestered their parents to throw them lavish graduation parties with the hope that after graduation, a white collar job came in handy.

According to Edrine Lusiba, a social entrepreneur and the president of St Mary’s College Kisubi Junior Achievement Alumni, while at the school between 2006 and 2012, he was introduced to the Junior Achievement Company programme. 

In 2011, his printing company, New Rich Media, won the ”Company of the Year” award and in 201I, it was selected to represent Uganda in the JA Africa competition in South Africa.

The purpose of the programme was to introduce young people to the entrepreneurial spirit at an early age so as to address the levels of unemployment among youth instead of letting most of them slip into gambling.

“When you are still young, you have the time, the ideas and the opportunity to grow within the ranks. You should learn entrepreneurship and how to come up with a business idea when you are at school. When you start a business while still at school, then you can start something you can run outside when you start at school,” he says.

Citing himself, he says he started the New Rich Media Company while at school. They ventured into branding Company T-shirts, and jumpers for different companies and it is something that he has grown into, created employment for some colleagues and his family now survives on the business. He notes that after observing the hundreds of thousands of graduates that universities churn out annually, he realised that not the same number of jobs were being created because fewer people were retiring.

He convinced himself that he could create jobs for his colleagues and also employ graduates from the university. He also ensured that when he started the branding business, he made sure that his children and wife could take over the business from him because having attended several business incubation clinics, he realised that to be successful in business, one needed to create a product that brings in the money to make them rich.

Citing people who open online businesses today, he says it is wrong for one to open an online business without producing a service or product of their own to sell online. Taking a restaurant as an example, he says one should not open an online restaurant if they do not have a kitchen where to cook their own food to differentiate themselves from the other restaurants.

“In business incubation class, they will inspire you to become the next Elon Musk, but the motivational speaker will not tell you that to become rich, Elon Musk manufactures batteries for the electric vehicles. Mark Zuckerberg built an office where they keep data, Apple sells the iPhone which technology makes it unique,” he said.

According to Racheal Mwagale, the chief executive officer Junior Achievement Uganda, the JA Company programme was started in 1919 to help young people in school learn how to run business hands on.

“It is better to teach business while the students are still at school. Every New Year we launch the new company programme in schools to teach students about business in a practical way. We cannot learn business in books. Brent went to the best business school in America but nothing taught him business better than this programme,” she said, referring to Brent Sobol, an alumnus who has become a successful philanthropist, impact investor and venture capitalist.

She explained that before starting a business, the entrepreneur should ensure that the business is solving a problem in the community and that is when the programme will help them with ideation, provide the leadership for the students to learn that if they want to get a job, they must apply for it and if they meet the minimum requirements, that is when they get it.

If they want to start their own businesses, they are given manuals that show them the requirements needed to open a company. They include things like the company vision and mission, the leadership an governance structures, how to raise capital to capitalise the company, the management structures, project management principals, the roles and responsibilities of different departments and employees they will been to hire.

While launching this year’s programme at St Mary’s College Kisubi last Sunday, Brent Sobol a graduate of the programme said the programme helped him to run ethical business. He offered his time to speak to the students’ real talk straight talk about business and life and how to succeed because it is a difficult road out there.

“When I was at school and lacked confidence, I did not know what I wanted to do. This programme gave me something positive that I enjoyed and it taught me real skills, to become a leader and I nurtured business skills,” he said.

He added: “We have a problem in the world. I have been to 73 countries, schools are not teaching financial literacy. We are graduating broke people. They do not know how to balance a check book they do not know how to save their money, they do not know why they should buy a house,” he lamented.

He said these are the basic questions the Junior Achievement offered him in the four years he was a student. He says Students have amazing opportunity to better the world they live in. Unfortunately, high school students are doing drugs, promiscuous sex, stupid video games about war, nasty music and they never think of putting money in their pockets, which otherwise is a source of pride and joy.

Asked how one can get a right business idea to venture into, he says the more experience and exposure we have to different things, the more chances we are able to get to know what we want to do. He says when Junior Achievement gets you to explore the different avenues to life, one enjoys their passion.

“I evolved over the years from being a dirty kid in a small town over the years with a bunch of losers, to being a workaholic in business and accumulated a good bit of money and now focusing on fulfilment of life because I have been successful in business but know I want to be fulfilled and I am fulfilled as a human being,” he said.

He explained that he is touring Africa to share with young people real positive stories and he is working with an orphanage run by nuns and through a Microfinance, he is giving people cows as those are things that make him feel good because the Bible commands us to do good deeds not words. He wants to encourage young people to emulate him because he never gave up.

In Uganda, he is helping farmers in Mityana with a dairy project, in Rwanda he is funding a tree-planting project to reduce carbon in the atmosphere to keep the world green, and in DR Congo, he is working with a company that is taking away plants from forests to help people who are dealing with different anxieties.