The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Business on the Edge: How to Turn a Profit and Improve Lives in the World’s Toughest Places by Viva Ona Bartkus, Emily S. Block

Episode Date: July 20, 2024

Business on the Edge: How to Turn a Profit and Improve Lives in the World’s Toughest Places by Viva Ona Bartkus, Emily S. Block https://amzn.to/4bQtrg2 A road map for how businesses can grow and make money while reducing poverty and conflict in some of the world’s most challenging environments Many companies worry that expanding into emerging markets is a risky—and even dangerous—move. Professors Viva Ona Bartkus and Emily S. Block see things differently. They argue that by entering markets in the world’s frontline regions—areas stuck in cycles of violence and extreme poverty—businesses can actually create stability and expand opportunity for communities and corporations alike. From helping Colombian farmers transition from growing coca to produce to disrupting human trafficking rings by creating more construction jobs in the Philippines, Business on the Edge proves that businesses can make money while advancing corporate social responsibility, environmental conservation, and social justice. Partnering with groups including multinational companies, NGOs, and the US military, Bartkus and Block outline their process for generating opportunities, detailing their successes and failures in launching over eighty growth-oriented business solutions in thirty countries. Bridging the gap between academic research and real-world experience, Business on the Edge shows how businesses can reduce risks, cut costs, and increase profits, all while creating economic opportunities that transform communities. About the author Emily Block is an Associate Professor of Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Management and the George Cormie Chair in Management at the Alberta School of Business. Her research program explores how values pluralism impacts the processes of legitimacy and change, the nature of social evaluations and how organizational theory can be used to understand and address grand challenges. Emily’s research has been published in journals such as AMJ, SMJ, JBV, JOM, MISQ and JMS. Her book, “Business on the Edge,” explores how business can both thrive and improve lives in post-conflict environments. She serves on the ASQ editorial board and is a Visiting Professor at Strathmore University in Nairobi, Kenya. She received her BBA in Management from the University of Notre Dame and her PhD in Organizational Behavior from the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the big show. We certainly appreciate you guys, as always, for 16 years, 2,000 episodes. We bring you the most smartest minds, the most brilliant people, and none of them are me.

Gosh darn it. I'm just some idiot who paid for the mic, made a show, and I don't know. I probably should be living on a viaduct next to the river in a van. Somewhere I screwed the syntax of that up, but I'm not Chris Farley, or as funny. Anyway, guys, welcome to the big show. Refer the show to your family, friends I'm not Chris Farley or as funny anyway guys Welcome to the show refer the show to your family friends or relatives damn it or else What are the kind of podcasts that host threatens his audience with violence? You guys go to good reason for it says Chris Voss

What kind of show is this youtube.com for chest Chris Voss LinkedIn comm for chest Chris Voss? So my guess is going what the fuck did I get myself into? Call me booking agent what the fuck did i get myself into that was exactly what i was gonna say call my booking agent what the fuck anyway chris voss won the tiktokity and if you really want to buy me a cup of coffee because mine's about halfway empty right now go to buy me a coffee.com for chest chris voss please i'm begging you i live on coffee anyway we have an amazing young lady on the show we're talking about her hot new book that's flying off the presses here coming up in july and you, I wrote this the other day because you've heard me say on the Chris Voss show that stories are the owner's venue to life. And that's why we collect stories in the Chris Voss show, why I'm a griot, why we talk about people's stories,

how they help you identify that you're not alone in the world and you can learn more. And I can't wait to say that I'm going to say on the air for copyright purposes. But people are the sum of all their stories collected on their journey through life. Stories are the fabric of who we are. So if you reprint that, I'm going to see you. Anyway, so that's why we collect stories. And we've got an amazing storyteller to tell us her stories that she's collected through her life. Emily S. Block joins us on the show today.

Her new book coming out July 16, 2024 is called Business on the Edge, How to Turn a Profit and Improve Lives in the World's Toughest Places. Emily's going to be talking to us about her insights there. She is an associate professor of strategy, entrepreneurship, and management, and the George Cormie Chair in the Management at Alberta School of Business. We love Canada. Her research program explores how values, pluralism impacts the process of legitimacy and change, the nature of social evaluations, and how organizational theory can be used to understand and address grand challenges or just how to learn to speak properly. Her research has been published in journals such as AMJ, SMJ, JBV, JOM, MISQ,

and JMS and ABCDEFG, HFJK, LMNOP, and all of it will help you get a J-O-V, maybe. So she got her new book out. Welcome to the show, Emily. How are you? Thank you for having me. That was a great introduction, although I sound much more boring in my bio than I think I am in real life. I mean, we hope so, because we want you to be interesting for the audience.

So give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? We are at thefrontlinesinstitute.com. You can find me on Twitter, or X, I guess it is now, Dr. Emily Block, and ES Block on Instagram, Emily Block on Facebook, or just send me an email at eblockaty ualberta.ca because I'm in Canada. So there you go. You have a lot of blocking going on. Have you seen a therapist?

Oh my gosh. So give us a 30,000 overview of your new book, Business on the Edge. Okay. So I spent the last 20 years or so doing service learning projects with my colleagues in all over the world, bringing students opportunities for them to work with NGOs and governments and big organizations and the military all over the world and trying to kind of humanize business a little bit, trying to figure out how business can solve non-business problems. And we had collected all of these stories and all of these data, you know, in all of our travels. We've been in 80 projects, 30 different countries.

And we really were looking for a way to bring them all together. And when I was pregnant with my daughter, I was on bed rest for 100 days. So laying on my back, nothing nothing to do not even allowed to open my laptop and my my good friend and my co-author was like okay let's write a book let's write a book finally and so that's what we did and i just laid there and talked on the phone with her and she typed and and we finally got a chance to kind of take a you know a huge high level view of all the work we had done and and try and bring and bring it together in a way that could maybe inspire some people and define some new opportunities.

Wait, you mean I could have phoned in my book? I mean, maybe. Call my attorneys. I'm suing, damn it. They gave me a tight line. What the hell? Letter by letter. I mean, I made her type it.

Oh, man. Where do you get these people? Is she fine? Oh, man. I'm working on my second book, and I have to type line. What the hell? Letter by letter. I mean, I made her type it. Man, where do you get these people? Is she fine? Oh, man. I'm working on my second book, and I have to type it. That's kind of the problem. Anyway. You should just use auto AI or something just to talk it into your phone.

It's true. Some people are just letting AI type it themselves. They're just giving it prompts and letting it write it. I mean, there's a lot of that going on on Amazon. But there's a cathartic thing that i have with writing ask anybody who knows me they're like you have a podcast and to talk a lot huh i'm like how can you tell and you're like you write a lot just on about anything and i'm like i never shut up but i don't know i should marry myself i suppose on the cover you have a picture

of this it's basically a grenade with a pineapple top coming out of the top of the grain. What is the symbolism behind that? So we actually took a picture. That isn't the exact picture, but we took a picture of a piece of graffiti in Columbia that pictured this pineapple grenade. And they kind of morph into one another. And it's really the symbolism of opportunity growing out of conflict and that really stuck with us and and we were really

excited to be able to use that as a book i i wish we could we knew who the street artist was who put it up there because we'd love to give it some credit but they're in another country that doesn't have good copyright law so but but that essentially symbolized all the things that we were thinking about as business as a tool for stability and also an opportunity to grow out of conflict. And that really gave the message that we were looking for. There you go. Conflict. Now, why did you focus on improving lives in the world's toughest places as a model for just about anybody who's in business to read your book?

Is it so that it sets a standard of, you know, if we can make this thing work and bombed out Zimbabwe, I'm not sure if Zimbabwe's bombed out. Don't sue me, people. Don't write me. But, you know, there are some war-torn places and places that are definitely challenged. Is the premise that, you know, if we can make this work here in some of the toughest areas, you can make it work on, you know,

downtown San Francisco or something? Of course, downtown San Francisco is kind of bombed out. That's part of the point. I mean, we have some stories in our book about coming back into more domestic markets. kind of bombed out. That's part of the point. I mean, we have some stories in our book about coming back into more domestic markets. And, you know, we are constantly in an uncertain environment. If you look at COVID and how that changed businesses, you know, there were a lot of lessons that could be learned of our approach in new and uncertain environments that we may face

anywhere. But in particular, we were really interested in kind of what we consider the front lines because everybody says, if you ask any business and you say, where are you internationally? They'll say, we're everywhere. We're everywhere. But they're not actually everywhere. They're in every big city, right? They're in Nairobi and they're in Bogota and they're in, you know, maybe Khartoum. Probably not right now.

But they say they're everywhere, but they're really just kind of a couple miles from an international airport. And if organizations are looking to expand really across the globe, you know, this constant desire for growth, there aren't that many places left in the world that are big cities that businesses aren't in. But there's huge markets everywhere else. So if you think about all the people and all the opportunities that live in the non-capital regions of lower and middle income countries, that's 1.4 billion people. That's the size of China. And that's $ trillion dollars of economic activity

it's 30 of the world's natural resources and they're essentially out of you know untapped right they're they're they're in places where you know they're there's conflict sometimes drug trafficking sometimes terrorism they're disconnected from their home country's infrastructure. They don't have basic services, often like electricity. You have to deal with, I don't know, rule of law with local militias or cartels or political factions. You just can't go in, sit in your air-conditioned hotel, go in a fancy car to your air-conditioned conference room and talk to the minister of finance. That isn't what the front lines look like.

And so if organizations are trying to grow into the end, these are the spaces that are left. We argue that you need a whole different set of tools and practices to be able to work in there. But then on top of that, we also believe that business can provide the infrastructure for stability in those places as well. So it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sounds like you're giving Starbucks more ideas on putting up more of their, schlepping more of their places. I have a Starbucks in my third bedroom. Let's see,

they're everywhere. They think they are, but their coffee should be on the floor. Anyway, that's just not appropriate. Anyway, guys. What we want is we want Starbucks to be buying from local coffee growers. Oh, yeah. Right? Yeah. Those are the coffee makers.

I buy retailers that I support, the ones that support local stuff in Africa and other places around the world, local farms, small farms, because that's usually where you get your good coffee. This is like becoming a coffee show, isn't it? Before we get into you and your upbringing, I do have to make one point. How do you pronounce your co-author's name? Viva Barkas. Viva Ona Barkas. Yes.

Is that right? Yeah. Do you constantly, whenever she walks in the room, go, Viva Ona Barkas? My husband does that all the time, actually. Does he? Good for him. He's a really smart guy, I can tell. Because I would do that, because I'm annoying. He's always like, how's Viva Las Vegas doing? Viva Ona Barkas.

I would just sing it. I'd get really good. Anyway, I put a lot of work into setting up and doing that joke, didn't I? Like, it's half the show at this point. So anyway, people like to get to know the author. Tell us a little bit about yourself. What was some of your upbringing? What got you down this road of doing all this?

Let's go to Haiti and see what the hell we can get blown up on ourselves or something. I don't know. You know, I'm one of seven kids in my family. Without explaining, you're trying to get away, huh? Yeah, running away really, really far. No, I, you know, all of my siblings did all of this, like, humanitarian stuff, right? You know, worked in orphanages and, like, homeless shelters and did teaching English in Belize and wanted to to be a monk and you know

and I went to business school worked for a consulting company and my parents you could see their faces every time they were like telling stories it's like Doug's gonna be a monk but Emily we're hoping she'll go to grad school like I was the black sheep of our family kind of wanting to go the traditional you know don't get a job i'm like don't but you know i think that a part of it was a little bit i don't know rubbing off on me and but i i kind of thought like why do i have to be a blood-sucking horrible human who doesn't care about the world just because i'm in business i could actually care about the world and use these skills. You're really insulting me at this point. You realize that, right?

I apologize. I'm a blood-sucking whatever. Anyway, go ahead. No, it's just, you know, thinking about, I just feel like business has gotten such a bad reputation. And granted, some of it is warranted. But it is a set of tools and practices and skills that can be really used to make the world a better place. And a very small minority of businesses and a very small minority of business people are kind of driving the narrative. And I see the failure of the aid model, like trillions of dollars pumped into economies with very little result. And I really think there's a heck of a lot of human

dignity in a good day's work. I think people like to take care of their families. And I think they want to, you know, have stability in their lives. And, and economic stability does that. And economic viability does that. And, you know, I believe fundamentally that business can be a tool for good. And it's just about figuring out how to flex those muscles, figuring out how to use them. Why is it important for business to use, you know, for me being a blood sucking, whatever it was you referenced earlier, why is it important to not be that? And do you try and do better with your tools and, and, and do better to help people feel better. Like, why can't I just be like a billionaire and just not give a shit,

I guess. I mean, I mean, I would argue that the skills that you, you, if you can work, this is where going out to Europe, if you can make it here,

you can make it anywhere. I think that if all you want to be is a blood sucking billionaire, you could use those skills, you can make it anywhere. I think that if all you want to be is a bloodsucking billionaire, you could use those skills to gain prominence. But where's the fun in that, Emily? For me, I just want a little bit more excitement in my life. But I really do think that… That's what you buy the second yacht for. Take the second yacht and stay off the coast of Sunniton.

You enslave a few people in a third world country and get them working mines and stuff and you buy the yacht. But I also think that we're all in this together in the world, right? Not really. The billionaires are all in it together. I've been hanging out with Elon Musk too much. Go on. don't know climate crisis covid supply chain challenges poverty that's what the bunkers are for that's what the million dollar bunkers are for i'm hoping to put the bunker people out of business that's what i'm looking for facebook needs needs that so let's do it so it's important it makes the world's important. It makes the world, everyone feel better.

You contribute to the world, and then you're not a blood-sucking leech. And you can make money. I mean, I think that there's money to be made in these markets, and they have the additional benefit of improving people's lives. There you go. Improving people's lives. What a concept. Note to self, be less blood-sucking. Maybe cut it down by, I don't know, 10%. So there you go. Improving people's lives. What a concept. Note to self, be less blood sucking. Maybe cut it down by, I don't know, 10%.

So there you go. So tell us some of the stories or examples maybe you've used in the book that you're, you know, you've set forth as blueprints that companies can use. disconnected from a company in particular but i'll talk a little bit about how i think that business as an approach can contribute in places where it wouldn't normally be used and my favorite and kind of kind of heartbreaking but also very illustrative example of this is the business of sex trafficking so we were working in the in the Philippines with a partner who was looking to improve their programming as an NGO trying to improve their programming in human trafficking. And, you know, all the work they were doing was in like trying to prevent people from being recruited in the first place, like with, you know, public service announcements, or once they get rescued, trying to kind of give them skills and job training and psychological training to help them reintegrate back into society.

But when we kind of joined with this partner, we said, what happens between recruitment and rescue? And is there anything we can be done in this space to actually change the equation? So what we did is we just pulled out our supply chain analysis. And sadly, people, in this case, are products. They have to be moved. And most of the time, you use supply chains to figure out how to get things better from A to B. But in that case, we were able to figure out how, by tracing the path of a trafficked person from their village to a brothel and how can

we make it more expensive for traffickers more difficult for them you know what are some of the tension points there so make it harder for them to move and traffic people and more expensive you know and it might be easier for them to do it online it might be easier for them to traffic in drugs or in animals maybe you know and but we want to shift their business model we want to at least make it more expensive because the returns right now on a trafficked person it's all profit for for the bad guys and if we can erode some of that profit maybe we can get them into into some other activities i saw this i don't know i saw this like thing on on instagram it was talking about how the local italian restaurant in a town used to be a front for the mob but then now they make

such great pizza that they've shifted their business model entirely you know that's kind of the goal is that if you can really create legitimate business opportunities for people, that's where most people want to go. There you go. And if you add some pineapple to that pizza, you can make even more profit. Oh, that's so Canadian. I just lost

the Italian crown. But there's five of them, so it'll be fine. Anyway, so these are great ways that people can use this to turn a profit and improve lives in tough places. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere, I guess is the thinking, right? And that by working in these environments, you had totally damaged for 50 years of civil war. And then there's this peace agreement. The FARC soldiers resettle into these environments, and they're side by side with communities that have been terrorized by war.

And how do you stop that conflict from just continually persisting? One way to do it is to encourage these values, neutral interactions, transactions between people that get them to know one another. And eventually they start building these relationships and actually building business together or selling with one another, realizing that their lives are interconnected, kind of breaking down those stereotypes and actually contributing to the restabilization of that environment. There you go. One of the things we were able to establish in the world through the Marshall Plan and other things was, you know, an integrated world economy that, you know, made it so that money was more important than war. And maybe we'd all just get along until the Russians came along. But with Ukraine, you know, that was kind of the idea that we, you know, we get along better if we're trading partners and, you know, we scratch each other's back a little bit when we're not spying on each other. But it's a weird coke and dagger game. But, you know, so we can do that.

And I imagine a lot of war-torn places, that's really important. I mean, you look at Africa and just what a, I mean, it's a beautiful continent. It has a lot of resources, you know, between AIDS and revolutions and wars and stuff. You know, it's just a constant, it just seems like it's a constant shit show. And man, if you could ever get that whole continent to work together with each other to do business and get along, it would probably be one of the most powerful countries in the world. Yeah, it would be, there would be lots of really powerful places. And honestly, if you take a look at the growth rates in what was in the 2000s and the 90s, kind of what Paul Collier would call like the bottom billion, those countries in mostly

sub-Saharan Africa that were experiencing no or declining GDP growth per capita. And now they're growing faster than anywhere else, right? Look at the growth rate in Rwanda over the last 10 years. It's pretty astounding. But in most places where we see that growth rate, we're seeing it in the cities not really across the country and for me that's an opportunity for organizations that for businesses that that want there's a there are places on this earth that are not that are not expanded into that have underutilized capital underutilized labor underutilized resources that can be the source of real wealth generation both for or companies and

for those populations. Definitely. I mean, the biggest problem with Africa was, I think it was AIDS wiped out a quarter, if not a third of its, not only youth, but its older generation. It put it back like 20, 25 years. And totally reshaped kinship networks and how people care for middle generation was just gone. Yeah. It would be interesting to see, like I say,

if they ever got that whole continent together to become a powerful thing. I think there's more resources there than there is anywhere else on Earth. I don't know. It is the cradle of civilization, so there you go. Anything more we should tease out to get people to pick up the book before we go? I would say that there is a huge value in bringing these skills back home as well. So we have a friend who did the Johnson & Johnson rollout for their COVID vaccine, the J&J rollout. And, you know, J&J didn't get as much good press about their vaccine rollout as Pfizer, but J&J did some really astounding things when they made some decisions around their vaccine rollout. They purposely

chose single dose, non-refrigerated, focused on vaccine hesitant people. and their partnerships that they developed to be able to deploy this vaccine with SEC coaches and with Southern Baptist churches in order to kind of reach rural vaccine hesitant people. That was amazing. And in fact, the person who was in charge of that was one of our students and former students at Notre Dame in this program. And he kind of called Viva up and he said, if I'm going to take this job, how do we run the Botful play? This is on the front lines play, which is what we call our program. And it's like, how do we run this play? And it really is the same thing. It's building unusual partnerships, getting your boots dirty, really getting to know the environment, reaching out into rural places that aren't normally prescribed and covered,

and really looking for opportunities to use business tools creatively. And so if you're doing this around the world, that's great. It also gives you some real skills that you can bring back when we have those uncertain times here. There you go. So this has been fun to have you on emily and talk about all these wonderful things and of course find out about your co-author and pineapples that have grenades attached to them which i'm never going to cut open so there you go give us your dot coms emily so we can find you on the interwebs the frontlines institute.com and find me on LinkedIn or Twitter or Facebook or Insta. There you go.

Yeah, eBlock. There you go. And thank you, Emily, for coming on. Thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com. Fortuna's Chris Voss. All the crazy places on the interwebs. Be good to each other.

Stay safe. Order the book wherever fine books are sold. July 16, 2024. Business on the Edge. How to Turn a Profit. Improve Lives in the world's toughest places thanks for tuning in be good each other stay safe we'll see you next time or not