Small-business director teaches entrepreneurship skills in Asia

John and Jerri Balsam went to Southeast Asia in December with a mission to educate as many people as possible on how to successfully start, operate and sustain a business.

It was not a vacation by any means.

The director of the Northwest Montana Small Business Development Center based at the Flathead Valley Community College, John gave 10 presentations over three weeks in Myanmar and Cambodia. These talks centered around teaching entrepreneurs and new or small business owners to manage financial stability. He focused on skills such as understanding how their income statement and balance sheets work together, break-even analysis and contribution margins.

“These are things we take so for granted over here,” he said. “Over there, it was very clear these people are not at all familiar with these concepts and tools.”

At FVCC he teaches these concepts and tools to local business owners every day. He teaches Profit Mastery to business owners who sign up to learn exactly what he was outlining on the other side of the world.

The U.S. State Department’s Professional Fellows Program sponsored the trip, his second to travel and share business lessons to the Southeast Asian communities. Jerri received an FVCC Adjunct Professional Development grant to accompany him and promote English writing methods.

In his time in Myanmar, Balsam saw a new shift in the country was apparent for the business community. The country had been ruled by a military entity until 2011, and in November, the National League for Democracy party won control of the parliament in the first national election by a landslide. Alongside this change in the political air has been a push to improve infrastructure and develop economic sectors.

“Myanmar is just now opening up,” John said. “It’s still a communist country, still very much a developing country, but now people have that opportunity to start and manage their own business. It’s phenomenal to see how many people are doing that.”

Cambodia is another country in a lethargic state of development, but has been open to fostering domestic business for much longer. The cities they visited in Cambodia were much larger. Jerri said in recent years it has become much more common for Cambodian organizations to participate in programs to exchange students and professors.

“They’re much more promising,” she said. “Just in a matter of two years it’s opened up more and more.”

Jerri, an adjunct writing professor at FVCC, went with a separate goal of setting up a relationship with a college in Southeast Asia, hoping to connect her writing class with one of their own on a regular basis for a shared virtual writing class.

But Jerri hit a roadblock almost immediately in Myanmar. While the country has more free-flowing online information now than was available in 2011, the system for approving a virtual English writing class affiliated with an American class would have taken months, maybe years, to finally begin the connection.

“It’s quite closed in terms of education,” she said.

Jerri said she received a better response from professors in Cambodia, who seemed open to the idea and promised to stay in touch about the chance of connecting an English writing class.

John said most of the people he interacted with were not from large companies or work forces. They were mostly individuals, he said, out to see what it takes to establish a viable business.

“They realize that education is the key to their development and they were incredible students,” John said. “There are now many nonprofits working to improve education and many work to improve English language skills.”

When John returned, his recommendation to the fellows program was to set up a series of small business development centers in Cambodia and Myanmar.

“It would be something that would require very little monetary input but have an extraordinary impact if they were to implement those in those countries,” he said. “It would take someone who knows what they’re talking about, but it wouldn’t even need to be an American.”

By the end of many of the presentations, several future entrepreneurs and business owners were reaching out to John with business cards or contact information, asking to stay in touch for future business plans.

He has been in contact with between 20 and 30 people from his December trip that have reached out for business advice. He said about 500 people attended the presentations.

John sees it as establishing a bond with these countries as they try to pick themselves up in the 21st century.

“They’ve got a long way to go, but they’re trying,” he said.

Reporter Seaborn Larson may be reached at 758-4441 or by email at slarson@dailyinterlake.com.