 Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. Welcome to the U.S. State Department's first interactive web chat in our larger Entrepreneurs Exchange series, in which we'll host a number of interactive discussions on entrepreneurship. Today's web chat, Build Your Business, Build Your Community, will focus on social entrepreneurship or how to create innovative solutions to some of the most pressing challenges of our world today. My name is Andy Rabins, and I serve as a special advisor on global youth issues here at the U.S. Department of State, where I focus on helping the U.S. government better engage young people internationally to help solve the pressing challenges of today while also building greater global connectivity and networks to shape the world of tomorrow. Today, I'm joined live in our studio by Eric Wilson, CEO of Noble Impact, who is here to answer some of your questions on social entrepreneurship. Eric is a Washington, D.C.-based entrepreneur, investor, and startup advisor. He currently serves as CEO of Noble Impact, a new education venture in partnership with the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock, Arkansas. He brings integrated entrepreneurship and public service education to kids from kindergarten through high school. First passion in innovation and education started when he joined the founding team of the Clinton School of Public Service, helping build the world's first master in public service degree program. In his particularly time-leap moment to have this web chat this morning, this afternoon, this evening in Egypt, as this week marks, as next week marks, the Global Entrepreneurship Week and the Fifth Annual Entrepreneurship Summit in Marrakesh, Morocco. The U.S. government has made a particular point of building out an international exchange alumni network to connect entrepreneurs from around the world. So much about becoming a successful entrepreneur depends on building the right networks, and with a global alumni community of over a million people around the world, you can be sure that there are many other entrepreneurs out there with whom you can share success stories and challenges. Before we begin today's discussion, I'd like to extend a special welcome to all of the alumni of U.S. government-sponsored international exchange programs who join us from around the world, including those gathered at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, who we'll see on-screen very shortly. We're looking forward to your questions and keep them coming at any time in the chat space or on Twitter using the hashtag, entre exchange. Finally, we have a special guest expert joining us today in the chat space. His name is Graham Marsden, and he is the Director of Communications for Entrepreneurs Organization, EO, where he has worked with and supported thousands of entrepreneurs around the world. He is there to help answer your questions as well. All right, it looks like we have a lot of questions already coming in, so let's field a question from our online audience to get us started. Leonardo from Kazakhstan asks, there are many definitions of entrepreneurship. How do you define it? Well, it's the pursuit of opportunity, and I think today we're trying to talk about social entrepreneurship, and I'd like to quote Peter Diamandis, the founder of X-Price. The world's biggest problems are also the world's biggest business opportunities. I've had a chance to talk with a lot of you over the last few days in hearing about your ideas, and the great thing about social entrepreneurship is it doesn't matter what country you're from, it doesn't matter what language you speak, man or woman, this is a place that we can all come together, and it's really, I think, in our human nature that we just want to do good work, and we want to solve problems, we want to make our lives better, we want to make our family's lives better and our community better, so I'm excited to talk about that. It's a good question. Entrepreneurship is about the pursuit of opportunity. You want to move on to see what else we have out there? Sure, we'll take another question from our, to our online audience. Let's see here. I have an online viewer who asks, Eric, based on your experience, what is the most difficult problem you've encountered running a business, and how did you resolve that problem? The most difficult problem you encounter running a business. I think when you're, well, I mean, if you look at the data, startups, if you want to be an entrepreneur, it's the best job in the world, but it's also the riskiest. Nine out of ten startups fell, and the ones that do fell, if you look at why they fell, 42% are pursuing a market that doesn't exist. There's not a market need. That's another way of saying that they're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. That's the main reason why companies fell, and so at the very beginning, you want to make sure that you have a very clear customer, and that you're solving a very specific problem for them, because when it comes to economics, I'm kind of a purist. The government doesn't create jobs. The business sector doesn't create jobs. Customers create jobs. If you're solving a problem for them, they will keep buying. If you're not, they're going to take their business elsewhere. Great. Thanks, Eric. And now we're going to turn to our audience of exchange alumni watching from the embassy in Cairo. I'd like to introduce you to Egyptian alumnus, Mohamed Issa, who in 2011 participated in the State Department Study of the U.S. Institutes Exchange Program, SUSE, and works at the International Education and Resources Network, or IEARN, in Egypt. Mohamed, are you there? Feel free to ask Eric a question. Mohamed, we're having a little trouble hearing you here. Okay. Mohamed, we'll be right back to you. We're having a little trouble hearing you. We're going to move on to one more question, and then we'll come back to our colleagues in Egypt. So we have one more from our online audience asking, Eric, how can social entrepreneurs attract talent when there aren't high salaries and options? Well, I think that there's two ways to think about this. If you're starting a social enterprise, you want to attract talent that is there for the mission, not for the social return, not for the financial return. So if you're having a hard time recruiting someone and they don't want to come on board because of issues with salary, they might not be the right person. Everybody in your team needs to be there for the mission, for the social purpose. But I also think that as social enterprises mature, there is more money that's being invested into them. If you look at impact investing, it is increasing over 30% over the past year. Billions of dollars is being invested in this market. Investors are starting to pay attention. And so I do think that the money is there. So, you know, and I think salaries are increasing. But again, you want to attract talent that they're there for the mission. Great. Makes a lot of sense. We'll take another question from our online audience. Betty, a Fulbrighter from St. Vincent in the Grenadines, asks, what's the best source of funds for a woman-owned business in St. Vincent? And I would add, do you have any recommendations for women entrepreneurs in the Caribbean and the West Indies? So I'll talk about it just in general. I'm not sure if I can talk about it specific to the Caribbean and West Indies. But it's a great, great question. Because I think women being brought to the entrepreneurial table is really important to this. And quite frankly, they're the biggest unused asset in the world in a lot of countries. So thank you for it. When it comes to resources, when it comes to funding, it depends on the problem you're solving. It depends on your business model. The great news is that technology allows you to pursue crowdfunding platforms. You can also, it's a great way for you to tell your story. You want to identify yourself with investors that agree with your mission. But at the end of the day, if you're starting an enterprise, it doesn't matter where you're from or man or woman. If you're solving a problem, the great thing about economics is that it can be blind to your sex or to your race. So if you're solving a market need, people are going to buy your product. So keep doing it. And just to follow up on that, Eric, are there any tactics that you might suggest to help attract and encourage younger women to enter into social entrepreneurship ventures or to identify problems in their community? Yeah, it starts early on. I think it starts in the home and it starts in the schools where we need to do a better job of empowering young women and bringing them to the table and getting them a voice in these discussions because sometimes they're left out. Great. Okay, it looks like we have Cairo back online. So let's go back to Mohamed. Mohamed, are you there? Yeah, I'm there, hi. We hear you loud and clear. Terrific. Go ahead, ask Eric your question. All right. Hi, Eric. Okay. In my job at Iron Egypt, we work with young people helping them develop new educational tools using emerging technologies and innovations to have a positive social impact and create projects. My question is, all of these students when they graduate, they want to start off their own things, but they don't know where to start. Can you help me elaborate on that? Yeah. So thank you for the question. It's good to see you, Mohamed. Here's what I would tell your students. If you want to be a social entrepreneur, all you have to do is raise your hand and say you're one because you don't have to register anywhere. There's no form for you to fill out. The best place to start is with the problem. Paul Graham of the Y Combinator, which is a really well-known accelerator in Silicon Valley. He always advises young people and entrepreneurs, you don't want to just sit around and think about the startup idea. It starts with a problem. A great example of that is, I'll tell you a little quick story, is Airbnb. Right now everyone looks at this as the new big idea, but when Airbnb started, it was very simple. The co-founder Brian Chesky quit his job and drove to San Francisco. And he moved in with a couple of roommates. Rent that month was $1,125, but they only had $1,000 in the bank. So there was a big conference coming into town, and they decided to open their home up as a bed and breakfast, which is like a hotel. And they got three air mattresses, blew them up and put them on the floor, and they called it the air bed and breakfast, because people that were attending the conference couldn't get into, there was no hotel rooms available. They were all booked up. Airbnb started out as a way to pay rent. And now it's the big idea. It's in every country except for North Korea, Iraq, Iran, and Cuba. Their last round of financing was at an evaluation of $10 billion. And everyone looks at this as the big idea, but it started out as three guys just trying to pay rent. So I would really try to challenge your students to identify a very specific problem and to really drill down on it. Thanks, Eric. Thanks, Mohammed, for the question. Eric, fascinating answer. It looks like we have a question from Moroccan alumna, Camilia Idrissi, who in 2013 participated in the State Department's International Visitor Leadership Program. I will read Camilia's question now. Camilia asks, I know that the first step in starting a social business is to identify the problem you want to solve. Eric mentioned that. For me, I saw that many Moroccan women weren't able to start their own culinary business because they lacked access to capital. To solve this problem, I started in my company, Spatula, a kitchen incubator in social enterprise that provides shared-use kitchen space for rent at affordable prices to mitigate startup costs. But once we've identified the problem we wish to solve and come up with a solution to solve it, what is the next step? Do we start developing a business plan right away? I would advise you not to pursue a business plan. And here's why. Business plans never survive first contact with a customer. And I know this from personal experience. When we started our first company back in 2010, we thought we needed somebody with an MBA to write a big business plan for us. And we actually gave up a piece of equity of our company for that. And while that person was very talented and added value to our team, that business plan set on a shelf and collected dust. We never used it. And it's because business plans don't survive first contact with customers. So if you look on the related links online right now, there's a Google Doc that I created that gives you some links inside for you to go deep on what's called the Lean Canvas. This is a tool that we use a lot at Noble Impact and in MBA schools now around the U.S. are incorporating the Lean Canvas into their curriculum. It's a one-page document and the idea is very simple. You want to identify a problem, create what's called a minimal viable product and get it in front of your customers quickly as possible. And you want to see how they react to your product because they're going to shape the long-term plan of not only that product but your business. So I would check out the Lean Canvas. There's lots of materials online that they're going to be given to you guys and sort of work through that. And that should put you in a good place. Great. Thanks, Eric. And thank you, Camilia, for the question. Now let's move to get some more live questions from our audience. Remember, you can ask questions live in the chat space or on Twitter using the hashtag EntraExchange at any point. We have an online question from Congo, a colleague who is working on projects that help stigmatize groups such as albino women gain financial literacy and management skills. Our colleague asks, do you have advice for those starting small and medium enterprises? Is there a specific process to get started and to get going? So I think again, I would leverage, if you're trying to start a small business, you essentially need a couple things. You need a good idea that solves a problem and you need the right team. And then you need to start getting out in front of customers as quickly as possible. I would also refer you to the Lean Canvas and watch the video and read through the materials that we're posting online. This is about you lining up the right talent to solve the right problem and making sure that you're always customer-focused. So who's your customer? They're going to drive everything that you do. So get in front of them as quickly as possible. Great. Okay, well, take the next question comes from the U.S. Embassy in Baku, actually a place I had the chance to visit a couple weeks ago. They ask, are there any specific fields of business where startups can be more successful than large businesses? Great question. Yeah, that's great. So here's why startups are so great. And it's similar to why young people are so great because they don't operate within the existence, within the existing knowledge base, meaning they're crazy enough to pursue new ideas. Startups and youth is where innovation comes from. This is why large corporations like Facebook and Amazon and Microsoft, this is why they acquire young organizations. This is why they acquire startups. It's a, because once you become so big, it's very difficult to innovate. And so you, at that point, you have to acquire startups in order to bring innovation in-house. So that's the advantage. Startups, the advantage is that you get to do more with less as long as possible. And I would leave, I would say just one more thing. When it comes to a startup, you want to go as long as possible without taking on investments. How long can you continue to grow your client base, to grow your business, before you have to take on investments and hire out? You want to do as much as possible just by yourself and by your co-founders. Great advice. Thanks, Eric. Another online viewer asks, how can you use entrepreneurship to encourage people to become active leaders in their respective communities? Yeah, no, that's a great question. You know, I define entrepreneurship as problem solving. And so, when you engage young people around entrepreneurship, you need to direct them toward their community, what they're familiar with. Because entrepreneurs are successful, they always start out in a field that they're familiar with. I mean, Google is Google because Larry Page was a thought leader in search before it was as easy as we have it today. Same thing with Bill Gates. So, you want to start young people out in their communities, where they're familiar. Get them thinking about ways to identify problems. That is where you start. Great. Thanks. As a reminder to our audience, we have Graham Marsden in our chat space to help ask questions. So, now let's get back to our live audience in Cairo. We have a question from Susie alumnus Mustafa Shahat, founder of Goal-Oriented Learners, an organization that provides employment skills training to Egyptian youth across the country. Mustafa, we're over to you. Okay. Hi, Eric. As you know, I started GOL in 2011 after receiving a grant from a Shilka youth venture. And for GOL to continue growing up, what type of business model would you recommend? Mustafa, that's a great question. And for those of you who are not familiar with GOL, I would tell you to check it out. I had a chance to visit with Mustafa and they had, I think, over 1,400 applications for their last workshop. And if that's not a market indicator, I don't know what is. So, really well done. Okay. If you look at business models, the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship gives us three sort of general categories. You have your non-profit model, you have your hybrid non-profit model, and then you have your social business. So, and I'm going to give you an example of all three of those really quickly. So, for your non-profit model, this is when your target customer base is at the lowest level of the economic pyramid. They don't have an ability to pay for your product or your service. And a great example of that is the Hippo Water Roller Project. So, essentially, the UN says that a billion people on the planet don't have adequate access to water. And, oftentimes, women and children are forced to travel great distances and carry that water physically. So, it's bad on their bodies. It's inefficient. It takes time away from other activities like education. So, it's a big problem. So, back in the early 1990s, this social entrepreneur named Grant Gibbs saw this firsthand when he was traveling in Africa. And he brought to market a very simple solution called the Hippo Water Roller. It's a big plastic barrel shape. It fills 90 liters of water, and you can roll it. But his customer base can't afford to pay this, so he reaches out to governments, nonprofits, businesses to sponsor these barrels. So, the World Food Program would buy 1,000 of them and put their logo on it and then distribute it to the community. So, that's an example of a non-profit model. Now, let's look at a hybrid non-profit model. Again, this is targeting a customer base at the bottom of the economic pyramid. They don't have any purchasing power, but the hybrid model is where all the experimentation happens. This is the most creative business model you can do because you want to constantly be looking for new ways to sell your services or your product to new markets. And a really good example of this is the Aravind Eye Care System in India that was started over 30 years ago by this really incredible man who goes by Dr. V. And essentially, in India, there's an estimated 12 million people that suffer from blindness, and the majority of those are caused by cataracts, which are a curable disease with surgery. And so, what they developed was they brought in new technologies and new systems to make their business more efficient. So, their doctors see 80 to 90 patients a day each one, and what they found was that with a large enough volume of patients, they could charge wealthier patients more and poorer patients less, and it would allow them to make a very sustainable national network of eye care clinics. So that's a really creative business model. Social business, the third one. This is when you set it up as a for-profit, but you're pursuing a double bottom line, meaning you're looking for a financial return, but more importantly, you're looking for a social return. The greatest example of this is the Grameen Bank, and Mohamed Yunus actually deserves credit for helping make social entrepreneurship mainstream. We're actually probably talking about it because of him, because when he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, he kind of, social enterprise became a global topic, and so he pioneered microfinance, giving loans to people that didn't have collateral. All right, very, very innovative for-profit business model that serves the working poor. So those are three examples that I would tell you to look at as you approach who's your customer base and what problem you're solving, and look at those three options. Great. Thanks, Eric. That's really useful. And thank you, Mostafa, for your question, and also congratulations again on the over 1,500 applications that we hear you got for your next training for youth leaders, so congrats on that as well. We'll now take another question from our online audience. A viewer asks, Eric, do you have any advice for social entrepreneurs who are interested in crowdfunding? Do you have any crowdfunding tips or crowdfunding suggestions? Yeah, no, that's great. So when it comes to crowdfunding, there's- don't- here's my advice. Don't depend on the internet to take it forward for you. I would really- crowdfunding requires a campaign style approach to this. So you want to tell a powerful story online. There's a number of different web platforms that you can use to crowdfund, but the biggest thing is telling a powerful story and empowering your friends and your network to push it out. These things don't happen naturally. Every once in a while, you get an outlier story that takes off, but it requires you to push it. And I think the great thing about social entrepreneurship is that when it comes to crowdfunding, you have an advantage because you're trying to- people are going to be more likely to give if they have an opportunity to get involved with a mission that they agree with around a social purpose. So I think crowdfunding works really well with social entrepreneurship. Great. Thanks, Eric. We have a special treat, actually. We now have a pic, a picture, from a viewing party in U.S. Embassy, Colombo. Thanks for joining, and hopefully we can get that up and show folks the engagement out in Colombo. We'll move back to questions. An online viewer, Malik, asks, Eric, what is the best way of marketing value-based products to people? The best way of marketing value-based products to people. So that could cover a wide range of products, but I'll try to answer. I think the best way is- so Reid Hoffman has this great quote. Reid is the co-founder of LinkedIn, and he says that if you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, then you launched too late. What he means by that is don't wait for you to have a 100% perfect, beautiful product. Get it out in front of people as early as possible. And if people like it, if they use it, they're going to share it. We live in a very mobile world. Not only will they share it with their friends, but they'll share it online. So the best way to market a product is to make a good one. And the only way to make a good one is to have the customers help you design it. That puts a burden on you, though, to listen to your customer and adapt your product to what they're saying. It's really important, and you want to create those changes as quickly as possible. We have a really interesting question from our information resource center, the US Embassy Information Resource Center in Lagos. Eric, what role does mentoring and networking play in incubating business ideas? Huge. So it's important for a couple of reasons. Number one is that as much as we would like to think, we never have all the answers. Entrepreneurship does not happen by yourself. And so it requires you to bring people to the table because you don't always have the best ideas. And so when it comes to networking, and particularly for those that are going to the Global Entrepreneurship Summit next week, you want to surround yourself with smart people. There's this saying that we're the average of the six or seven people that we spend the most time with. Remember that. The people that you surround yourself with influence you. And so that's the big challenge when you go to the summit or when you, even in your own community, you want to organize people around your idea so you can get feedback. And don't forget to support their causes as well. So networking is a huge deal. There's obviously benefits from friends opening up doors for you when it comes to business dealings. But at the end of the day, it's about surrounding yourself with smart people that care and bringing them into the discussion. Great. And many of you too, who have started your own businesses and who have really excelled in this entrepreneurship space, offer the opportunity to be a mentor yourself because there are a lot of folks who can learn a lot from your own experiences. So don't discount that as well. The next question is from the Crystal Fun team from Tbilisi, Georgia. They ask, Eric, how should an entrepreneur approach failure? You should approach failure with a smile on your face. As difficult as that is, this is not a cliche. Failure is the greatest educational opportunity for you. And in particularly, so in the U.S., we have, this is unfortunate, we have this culture where we celebrate successful entrepreneurs where they're at right now. And we don't do a very good job of celebrating the mountain of failures that they went through to get to where they are now. So when we read these autobiographies or these news stories, it seems like this perfect path that they took to this successful story. But there, I promise you that every single entrepreneur goes through a sea of failures. And your job is to make sure that when you do fail, ask the right questions. Why did this happen? What could I have done differently? How can I apply this to my next venture? So approach failure with a smile on your face if possible. Great. I think we'll take another question now from one of our study in the United States Institute alumnus from Tunisia who asks, Eric, how do I measure the impact of my social enterprise? That is a great question. Actually, there's no set formula. Nobody has an answer for you. But here's the thing. If you're starting a social enterprise, you have to identify two units to measure, two metrics. You want to identify a revenue metric and you want to identify a social metric. And it's really important for you to do this. I talked about the Hippo water roller company. Let's use that as an example. The revenue metric comes from corporate and government and nonprofit sponsorships. That's how they get their revenue. There are social metrics that they measure. They measure hygiene that comes from access, better health and hygiene that comes from access to water. They measure the number of hours that are saved by women and children. And those are two big things. And also just realize that your social metrics, those things that you choose to measure, they're going to change. And that's why you need to constantly be asking yourself, are we measuring the right things? So make sure you identify something because in social entrepreneurship, you're held accountable by your customers and your investors and your employees to the things that you tell them that you're impacting. So if you say you're impacting youth unemployment, you've got to hold yourself accountable with them and give them specific things that they can see how you're changing. Great question. We have another online viewer who asks, how can governments around the world empower social entrepreneurs? Wow, you guys tell me. So that's a great question. I think the role of government is to create an environment that encourages and incentivizes entrepreneurship, specifically social entrepreneurship. And and admittedly, we all need to do a better job of it. So because government isn't built and large businesses aren't built because they're so large to innovate. So I think you want to create grant making opportunities like they do here at the State Department. You want to encourage educational institutions to open their doors and programs to entrepreneurial type programming. I think the role of government is to help create the environment for this to take place. But those are a couple of things. Great. And part of the effort next week at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, which is in fifth year, was sparked by President Obama back in 2009, is to try to create that sense of international community among governments, the private sector, the public sector, young people to be able to provide that ecosystem, that global ecosystem for entrepreneurship to really flourish. So we look forward to also hearing from you all in terms of ways that your respective governments and also the United States can help create that atmosphere for you all as entrepreneurs to flourish. We have a lot of online questions coming in. The next question is, my community project is not for profit. How do we take care of day-to-day administrative costs? Well, so I'd be curious to find out what your project is. But if you're a non-profit, then you essentially have a few different routes you can take. You can do private donations. You can find grant opportunities through governments or large nonprofits. And you can also look for corporations that can maybe sponsor your initiative. It's essential that your job is to identify partners that can help fund your operations. That's the big challenge. So I would look at those three buckets and identify the ones that align with your mission, because they're going to be the ones that are interested in supporting you. Great, thanks Eric. We have a question from Camilia who asks, how can we move from the business plan development to the implementation phase? And this is back a little bit touching on your business plan question. Yeah, so I would reverse that question. Implementation phase happens immediately. Business plan happens down the road. You want to begin operating as quickly as possible. I really do think for startups the business plan is a waste of your time in the early days. There's three different phases for a startup. The first phase is problem-product fit. The second phase is product-market fit. So you have a product is the market coming to it, is they using it. And then the third phase is acceleration. And I think a business plan is more appropriate when you begin to transition from step two to step three. But when you're just starting out, problem-product fit, where's the problem, is this the right solution? That requires you to be in front and implementing in front of customers from day one. Great. Good question. We have a guest at the information resource center and Lagos who asks, how do I go from being a government employee to a social entrepreneur? Great question. Leaving a relatively safe job can be scary. Do you have any advice on how to make that transition? Well, it is scary. You know, so I can't take away the fear. There's no hiding the fact that entrepreneurship is risky. But at the end of the day I think entrepreneurship has gotten a little bit easier because of technology and access to resources. You know, every day I see entrepreneurs, I talk to them and I read about them all over the world where they're doing incredibly, incredibly creative projects. And it's become so much easier to start a business and begin creating transactions. You know, everybody is walking around with the equivalent of a supercomputer in their pocket. And I know that seems normal right now, but two decades ago it wasn't. It was really hard to start a business and now you can do it over a weekend. So if you feel like this is your passion, I would encourage you to start out with a side project. Keep your job at your government position and start out with a side project. Some of the greatest businesses in the world started out as an entrepreneur's passion on the side that they worked on at night and on the weekends. That should give you enough time to figure out if this is a real thing and hopefully build some confidence before you fully transition and take the plunge into entrepreneurship. Great. Thanks, Eric. And I'm sure that question resonates with a number of the folks who are out there thinking about making that move from the public sector into the entrepreneurship private sector space. Before we move on to more questions, we want to give a shout out to our viewing parties joining this program at the Information Resource Center in Lagos and the Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan. We actually have a question from a viewer in Embassy Baku right now who asks, Eric, is there one preferred business model for selling a product that benefits a community? No, no, there's not. So it depends on who your customer is in the community. So if they are at the bottom of the economic pyramid, if they can't afford the product that you're selling, then you're probably better off looking at a nonprofit or a hybrid model. But if they do have purchasing power or you're creating a market change, you can consider developing a for-profit social enterprise. So it really starts with the problem and it starts with who your customer is. That'll tell you what type of business model you need to create. Thanks. I think we have another question from one of our colleagues out in the field, Leonardo, who has a question and asks, Eric, what is the role of a college education and education more generally in becoming an entrepreneur? So this is here in the, I think, you know, you can't open up the newspaper without reading a headline about asking what is the role of college in entrepreneurship. You know, quite frankly, you cannot teach entrepreneurship. You have to learn it through experiences. And I think colleges have a, you know, they are the most fertile ground for innovation in the world. However, they have to do a better job of adapting to more experiential type programs. I think, you know, I'll quote Paul Graham again from Y Combinator. I think he makes a good point when he says you can either be a really good entrepreneur and a poor student or you can be a really good student and a poor entrepreneur. Because if you're starting a business, it's all consuming day in and day out. Some of the entrepreneurs I've talked to over the past few days, you know, their business is on top of their mind 24 seven when they wake up and when they go to bed. If you're in college and you have to stop and say, I have to go take Econ 201 now, when it's not relevant to your business, it becomes a distraction. So I think colleges are going to have to change and adapt if they're going to welcome real entrepreneurship on their campuses. But right now, I mean, it is an incredible, I mean, they do play a role, but there is an ongoing debate. So I'm going to be watching just as closely as you guys are and to see what happens. And there's some of the, just to follow up on that, some of the entrepreneurship skill sets that I know you do for the renewable impact and elsewhere should those be applied to a high school and even middle school or grade school level as well? Yeah, you know, I think so. So when think about this, when you finish, when you finish actually in your conversations at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, are you going to introduce yourself and say, Hi, you know, my name is Eric Wilson, and I got, you know, the following grade point average in high school, or I majored in, you know, economics in English when I was in college. No, I don't think anybody cares about that anymore. They don't care about what you majored in. They care about your skills. And they care about how you have applied those skills. So I think in for young people and even programs like GOL, when they go and apply for jobs, they're going to be telling them about the skills that they've acquired and how they've used them. That's how you sell yourself to businesses and to colleges. It's really important. So it's a great question. Thanks. Eric, our viewers want to know, do you have any recommended books to learn about social entrepreneurship? Anything, any other resources that you recommend to the folks in the field? Yeah, of course. So there's, if you go to the relay links, there's a public Google doc that lists a lot of resources at the very bottom. I've listed out a few books. The first one is the entrepreneur's playbook. And this sort of walks you through some very specific tactics on how to pressure test, plan, and launch your social enterprise. I would start with that one. It's really good. Great. Thanks a bunch, Eric. All right, let's take one final question from our online chat space. Our viewers want to know, Eric, what are some steps we can begin to take this week to begin implementing our ideas? Okay. To begin implementing? Implementing. Getting right to work. So, you know, I think if you want to begin implementing right now, you can do that. So, you know, it really starts with having a conversation. And have a conversation with the customer that you think has this problem. And this can be in your home. This can be in your school. This can be in your place of work. It can be in your community. Have a conversation. You start by getting information, seeing how people react to your idea. You know, if you are walking around with this idea in your head and not sharing it, you're never going to get anywhere. And I think, you know, one of the biggest barriers that we see in first-time entrepreneurs is fear. They're afraid of people reacting negatively to their idea. So, I would encourage you to have a conversation and begin having lots of conversations. And then the next thing is, you know, I really think it's important to whatever this service or product is, you want to create a version of it that as quickly as possible. In the startup world, they call it a minimal viable product. And it's essentially a rough version of what you want to do. And get it in front of people as quickly as possible. Great. Thanks, Eric. All right. Well, thank you all very much for your fabulous questions. I think we've learned some really great tips on how to become successful social entrepreneurs. Eric, do you have any final thoughts you'd like to share with us and the group? Yeah, sure. Can I give out a homework assignment? Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. So, in my pocket is, I carry around this little black notebook. And in it, I write down problems. So, here's my challenge to you guys. Everyone watching this, particularly the international exchange alumni, we all have a task. Our job is to create a generation of problem solvers. And to do that, you have to create this muscle, this habit of being aware of what's around you. And so, when you're walking down the street, when you're sitting in a cafe with your friends, even at your place of work, you need to become aware of problems and get in the habit of writing them down. And you can do it the old-fashioned way by writing it down in a book or you can do it on your phone using an app like Evernote. But day in and day out, you need to begin creating this habit and encouraging your students and the people that you mentor to write problems down because that's the first step before you ever begin solving them. So, if you're online right now, in the next coming days, send a tweet to me, make sure you use our entry exchange hashtag. If you buy a notebook or get a piece of paper, take a picture of it. Or tell us how you're using it on your phone. But this is, we should all be writing down problems and identifying them in our community. Because that's how we're all going to build a brighter future for ourselves. So, our task is to build a generation of problem solvers. So, that's your homework assignment, is to go online and tell us how we, you know, specifically, how are you going to begin writing down problems, whether it's on a notebook or on your phone, and begin sharing them. Great. That's a great note to end on. It's a great homework assignment. Many thanks, everyone. In closing, I'd like to thank Eric for taking the time to engage today. And also, Mohamed, Camilia, and Mustafa, our colleagues in Baku, and Tbilisi, and Lagos, and Colombo, and all international exchange alumni who joined us from around the world. Thanks also to Graham Marsden's contribution in the chat space. My sincere thanks to the enthusiastic viewing group at our US Embassy in Cairo as well. Thanks also to Mustafa and Mohamed once more. Thanks also to everyone who logged in to watch, including our viewing parties at the Information Resource Center in Lagos, again Baku, Yerevan, the US Embassy in Colombo, and others. A recording of this program will be available on the International Exchange Alumni website and the Facebook page. Stay tuned for our next Entrepreneurs' Exchange interactive web chat on December 10th. Thanks again, everyone, and we look forward to talking to you in the days ahead.