Archives 2014

At Askinosie Chocolate we started a program called Chocolate University before the first dark chocolate bar rolled off the molding line to engage the students of our factory’s neighborhood in our business. We bought and renovated our 100-year-old building in a blighted area of town. Our street, which parallels the railroad tracks, is populated with many social services like homeless shelters, food pantries, an LGBT outreach center, a health clinic, and some new small businesses like coffee shops, a dance studio, and a pizza place. The single inspiration for starting Chocolate University, however, was the Missouri Hotel which is not a hotel but the largest homeless shelter in our community. It is a block from our factory and home to about 80 children on any given night. We were inspired to start Chocolate University programs in the nearby elementary and middle schools and at the Missouri Hotel. The students get hands on experience in our chocolate factory, learn about small business, and we hopefully inspire them about a world beyond their own.

Our high school Chocolate University program is open to juniors and seniors in our city – Springfield, Missouri. This past year about 70 applicants competed for 13 spots. We have a Chocolate University advisory board which assists in the selection process consisting of essays, recommendation letters, and finally, interviews. This year, 6 of the students are private pay (funding the experience themselves) and 7 of the students are full scholarship, based on financial need (funded completely by Askinosie Chocolate fundraising efforts). The program has many generous donors across the country who share my passion: that we can change the world by exposing bright young people to the developing world, which not only changes their lives but the future communities where they will live. The cost for the high school program is about $4,000 per student.

Side note about how easy it is for small businesses to raise money for causes they are passionate about. Our donors make tax deductible contributions to the Chocolate University Fund at our local Community Foundation of the Ozarks. It took about ten minutes to set up the account and anyone can make a tax deductible contribution as long the disbursements from the fund are made to another non-profit institution. The Community Foundation handles all of the accounting, oversight, and IRS compliance. This is a super simple way for small companies to have a large impact beyond their own employee base. The possibilities are endless.

This past week our 13 students have been living a few blocks from our factory on the Drury University campus. Professor John Taylor has been leading them through an intensive experience preparing them for the trip. We began the week with a low key session introducing the students to my personal story and our company history. The curriculum developed by Dr. Taylor includes classes on our business model, analysis of our financial statements, and the role of business regarding social issues. He was assisted this week by Daudi Msseemmaa, the Africa Director for NGO Convoy of Hope. He is an American/Tanzanian and fluent Swahili speaker. He taught the students about Tanzanian culture, religion, education systems, and basic Swahili. We spent last Saturday tasting each step in the bean to bar process as well as every chocolate we make. Dr. Taylor and Daudi also assigned students presentations on various topics related to the program. On Sunday they were physically and mentally challenged at nearby Leadership Ranch with team building and leadership exercises. We also took a lot of time explaining the work that we already do in this remote corner of Tanzania in the village where we source our cocoa beans.

The students separated into 3 groups so they could be research, educate themselves, and be ready to help us in the village next week. We have three groups: Nutrition- which will help us assess our current lunch program (we’re sustainably feeding 800 students a day) and put on a seminar for village mothers; Tutoring- this team has created an assessment questionnaire which we will use to evaluate a new Saturday tutoring program we started for girls because the female graduation rate is so low in high school; and finally our Technology group, who will help install some new computers we are bringing to add to the ones we supplied in 2012, complete with Khan Academy Lite.

The students also attended our weekly all-company huddle. They observed how we practice open book management, report sales and production scheduling, and importantly, how we celebrate birthdays. Yesterday, to bookend the week, I led a Visioning class and the students wrote their individual Vision for their Tanzania journey using the “Zingerman’s/Ari Weinzweig way” of writing down their hopes and dreams for the coming days. [You can and should read more about this in Ari’s famous book – “Zingerman’s Guide To Good Leading, Part 1“- with an entire chapter devoted to this process]

Today they are packing and relaxing at home. Tomorrow they will meet us at the airport and we will embark on our 46-hour journey to our final destination of Kyela, Tanzania. Some of our students have never been outside of Missouri and one has never been on a plane.

Once we arrive in Tanzania we’ve got work to do, things to learn, people to listen to, friends to meet, new food to eat, children to laugh with, and hikes to take. We will meet up with seasoned traveler and medical doctor, Tom Prater, who’s helped me on every trip. Here is a sample of only some of the things we will be doing next week in and around Kyela, Tanzania:

• Attend some classes at Mwaya Secondary School and help install new computers
• Meet with the Empowered Girls (and Boys) Clubs we fund at the school
• Inspect the gourmet rice that we import and buy from the PTA and sell in the U.S., which funds the Sustainable Lunch Program at the school
• Bike ride to the local hospital for a tour and then to the school
• Meet with the PTA of Mwaya School to talk about the future
• Meet with the cocoa farmers we buy beans from and inspect the new crop
• Give the farmers an extensive chocolate tasting
• Share profits with farmers from last years chocolate sales on the beans from them using our financial statement translated into Swahili
• Give the Mababu Elementary School their first textbooks (that we bought in Tanzania)
• Break ground on the construction of 2 classrooms at Mababu Elementary School where 1,400 children are in 8 classrooms (we’re not building them, the locals will do that)
• Work on harvesting cocoa beans
• Host a beach party for all of the farmers of Mababu
• Hike the waterfalls of Tukuyu
• Attend a local village church service

I have logged about 30 trips to cocoa bean origin countries in the past 9 years. I have met farmers, stayed in their homes, and experienced their abundant hospitality … the list of experiences is long. When I fly out with the students Friday and in the coming 12 days I will be soaking it all up as I have many times before, but most of the time I will be watching them. I will watch them transform right in front of my eyes and that is best part of my job. I can’t wait.

In Part 1, I described how I followed my dream leaving behind a lucrative criminal defense law practice to start a small batch bean to bar chocolate factory.

In summary, I felt as though I might die if I did not find another career. I fervently looked high and low for the next thing in my life. Everyday for five years I prayed that God would give me something else to do and in short: I found chocolate. I left the law, the stability of a growing practice, and great money, to follow this chocolate mystery. Or was it really a siren song?

My wife sensed that something had been stirring in me and knew that I was not happy. She knew because I told her and could clearly see that I was on the hunt for something else. She had been a nurse and then a homemaker, and not just any homemaker but the best of the best. She was and is the rock upon which our immediate and extended family rely.

When I told my wife, Caron, that I wanted to start a chocolate factory and quit my law practice she looked at me calmly, lovingly and asked, “Can’t you just double up on your Lexapro?” “No,” I said “it’s not that simple. I don’t think the dose can go that high. I cant do this anymore.” She opened up to me, with tears in her eyes, that she was unsure if our marriage (22 years at the time) would withstand the stress of this chocolate venture of mine. I know now that is what she actually said but what I heard at the time was: “you need to be happy and we will find a way to get through this.”

There’s a lot of talk about people switching careers to follow their dream. Entire books and websites are devoted to the idea. Google pulls up 212 MILLION hits on that phrase. There are many reasons for this desire to switch including boredom, the search for meaning in work, or the adventure of something new. It’s not usually about more money. We all want fulfillment, adventure, and inspiration from our work. What’s not discussed very often is the downside to taking the leap from one good career to the next. Or that sometimes it can be better to stay with the devil you know, than trade for one you don’t.

If my grandpa had still been alive when I was contemplating the jump from law to chocolate I would have consulted him for sure. He was a simple, gentle, hardworking farmer who lived with my grandma on the same farm for over 60 years. They woke up early to milk the cows, plow the fields (behind a mule in the early years), work the garden, milk the cows again, and feed the chickens. They went to the same church every Sunday. They loved and helped their neighbors and vice versa. They were not rich or poor.

They were kind, unassuming, quiet, giving, and the happiest people I’ve ever known. I would have asked my grandpa about all of this and told him what I was thinking. He would have looked at me with a gentle confusion: “What do you mean you’re not happy? I don’t understand Shawn. You went to law school, you make good money, you work hard, and you want to leave that to make chocolate?” There would have been no way to respond to him because the concept would have been foreign to him in every way. The thought of giving up farming because he was not happy wasn’t on his radar. It’s what he did — he farmed.

From Walker Percy’s “The Last Gentleman:” “Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe that every possibility is open to him.” I had the mistaken notion that I could do whatever I could dream — up to and including neurosurgery (Ok… Maybe not that one). To all of my risk taker brothers and sisters out there, I hear you loud and clear: there would be no progress on earth but for those who dared to attempt what seemed impossible, only to make it reality!

Before I get too far in this “Don’t follow your dream” diatribe, I would like to approach the bench with a sidebar. Here is the deal. Our business was profitable after only a couple of years and we continue to push right on through the most difficult economy in my lifetime with double digit growth year after year. I have the chance to work with my daughter Lawren every day.

Before my dad died, it was my dream above all dreams to work as a lawyer with him so working with Lawren is indeed a real dream. We open our books to farmers — translating our financials into whatever language they need — and share profits with them. We take local students to Tanzania in our Chocolate University program.

Our little 14 person chocolate factory is sustainably feeding lunch to almost 2,000 children a day in Tanzania and the Philippines with zero donations; so far over 750,000 meals funded. I have had the chance to work directly with farmers and travel to their homes and farms every year since I started this business in 2005. I drank water from a water well that we drilled in a small village in Tanzania and will never forget that moment as long as I live.

But. . . I was selfish for not considering the stress, the wear and tear, the pain that this would cause my wife Caron. In the end — she was right — “following my dream” almost destroyed our marriage.

In some ways I lost a sense of stability in my search for meaningful work. With the benefit of reflection, I respect my grandpa’s 60 plus years of farming and continuity of life even through very difficult times. I admire people who work at one place or dedicate themselves to one vocation for decades. The devout monks of the world (of all faiths) share the tradition of stability in work, in life and in faith. The monastic tradition of stability is needed for monks as a grace of perseverance and commitment in order to live out their lives. One of the things I’ve learned from Father Charles Cummings in his book Monastic Practices is that I could give any work dignity by my thought and attitude. My career does not have to define me. I can give the task dignity by what I give it not what the work gives me.

The bottom line is that if the Ghost of Chocolate Future had swept me out of my bed in the middle of the night and hovered over all of the scenes of stress, the challenges (read my post of Direct Trade), tears, money, and pain that would transpire then I would not have taken the chocolate path. I would have doubled up on my Lexapro and continued my law career. However, I am grateful that the Ghost did not appear. I am where I am supposed to be on this new journey filled with joy and truly few regrets.

Just before I found this new career I had a strange but strong gut feeling that I would have the chance to experience joy on another level. Almost like walking through an imaginary door. It was not my dream to make chocolate; it was my dream to have a new path, a new inspiration, and challenge. Chocolate is the conduit that has given me two things: first, the opportunity to make something with my hands that people love from Tokyo to Stockholm, from San Francisco to New York; second, peace and personal fulfillment that surpasses what I am able to even comprehend right now.

In 2005, I was a criminal defense lawyer in Springfield, Missouri. I spent nearly 20 years defending people accused of the most serious crimes imaginable. I developed a reputation for winning, for aggressive cross-examination, and most of all the dedicated work of “leaving no stone unturned.” I loved the courtroom and everything that surrounded it. I loved the minutia: what many would call boring but what I called the difference between the death penalty and a not guilty verdict. I reveled in learning new things about DNA testing, blood spatter, gun shot residue or carpet fiber analysis. I didn’t really think about the money, but I made a lot of it. I came to the realization, however, that if I did not find a new career that this one would probably kill me. And not even so much from the myriad of death threats, although those were certainly shocking). I began to stop loving it and ultimately could feel it’s toll in my body — specifically in my chest.

After a nice stay in the hospital, my doctor explained that my chest hurting was not a heart condition. (Note to lawyers: if you tell your doctor that your chest hurts he/she will put you in the hospital.) Not a heart problem, he said; but I should talk to a psychologist. So I did that.
While the law is noble work filled with many attorneys who proudly and valiantly fight to defend their clients, there are some who should have left the profession long ago.

I remember listening to some of the older lawyers sitting around the “lawyers lounge” (a room for lawyers with a Mr. Coffee pot) on the ground floor of the courthouse, complaining about judges, life, clients, other lawyers, life, and life. I did not want to be that. I did not want to be 70, drinking coffee with the boys and bitching about my life while I waited for a hearing in court.
People have asked me if there was a “moment” when it hit me that I knew I had to leave the lawyering business. Yes, there was a moment. It was just before closing arguments in a murder case that was particularly emotional for me and it struck me that it was over. I won that case and continued my successful practice for several more years but I knew I needed to begin searching for another passion.

I had no hobbies — except for taking my daughter to Backstreet Boys concerts — and didn’t know how to be comfortable outside of a courtroom or the office. So I prayed a simple prayer every day for five years that went like this: “Dear God, please give me something else to do.” My type A personality ensured my radar screen was filled with dozens of business “opportunities.” I did eventually take up a real hobby: grilling. I bought a Big Green Egg and then a second one.

My path winded from BBQ ribs to baking to making chocolate desserts to . . .

On my way home from a funeral of a distant relative in 2005, in a flash, I had the idea to “make chocolate from scratch” but it must have been the more concretized version of a crazy notion that has been fluttering around in the recesses of my brain for some time. And why not? It was certainly a challenge and I thrived on challenges. Within a few months of that flash I was in the Amazon studying cocoa farmers’ post-harvest techniques and how they influence the finished chocolate’s flavor.

I was inspired in the Amazon and upon returning to Springfield I put my plan together of how I intended to leave my practice and start a chocolate factory. I got a table top grinder and my first small bag of beans and started making chocolate in the kitchen. My wife, Caron, wanted me out of her kitchen so I started making it in my law office kitchen.

Secretaries and paralegals helped me. It was not uncommon for me to be in court on a serious felony case in the morning and making chocolate in the afternoon. I took on a law partner to help me wind down my caseload. In time, we bought and restored a building in an area of town that needed people to buy and restore buildings. Then there was the 100 year old 6,000-pound granite melangeur from Germany, and so on. I convinced more of the family to help — especially my daughter Lawren, then a teenager, and my son-in-law Kyle. I put our entire life savings into this venture about 10 years ago.

I don’t look back on my law career other than the occasional itch to cross examine a lying expert witness. I don’t miss the money because Caron has managed to take the fraction [about 15 percent — yes that’s right — read that again] of my former salary and make it work. People ask: “Did you always love chocolate? This must have been a lifelong dream.” Not really — to either question. I liked all chocolate, basically never met a dessert I didn’t like. I was not a connoisseur of anything, did not know how to manufacture or fix anything, beyond a paper jam in our copier. But, I went for it.

Something happened once I took my first step to bring my plan to reality. I would like to report that the Universe opened up and obstacles magically disappeared, but that’s not what happened. Other lawyers thought I’d lost my mind and tried to talk some sense into me. I appreciated their concern but my days in the lawyer’s lounge were over and Askinosie Chocolate was born.

I am thankful I took the steps to listen to my body and mind about moving to another career even though it took me five years to find it. I wanted to do something with my hands and find a craft that would take me a lifetime to master. I have spent nearly 10 years and thousands of hours working on my chocolate making and business skills and have yet to reach perfection.

This path has given me the chance to love and serve in ways I never thought possible. I have been able to travel all over the world, start a company that turns a profit, allows us to share profits with farmers, and all the while produce award winning chocolate and sell it around the world. Our message is that a few people in a small company can have a big impact, all while creating a high quality product.

Stay tuned for Part 2: Thinking About Following Your Dream? Just double up on your Lexapro.

Growing up I spent a lot of time on my grandparents small farm in the Ozarks. We baled hay, fed and milked cows, helped in the garden, and collected eggs. And I pretty much hated all of it. Years later, after my grandparents were gone, I started loving and respecting what I’d gained from knowing my simple, happy, kind, hardworking and loving grandma and grandpa. Before I started Askinosie Chocolate, I knew I wanted to honor the cocoa farmers we work with in as many ways possible. It was and is personal for me. From day one we have worked directly with farmers: first in Ecuador; then the Philippines; then Honduras; and Tanzania. We travel to each country every year, meet with farmers, stay in their homes, and get involved in their communities, in many cases. We also pay very high prices for their cocoa beans — we pay directly to the farmers above world market price, which they typically receive only 70 percent of — and then when we return to buy the next crop several months later, we profit share. We translate our financials into the language needed, explain it line by line, and then disperse the profit share cash. Sounds easy? Well, it’s not. It’s the most complicated and professionally challenging thing I’ve ever done. And before I started this chocolate factory I was a criminal defense lawyer specializing in the most serious felony cases. That was challenging. This is more so.

I’d like to tell you a story about one of our origins, that is near and dear to my heart, that exemplifies these challenges. Four years ago when we sourced Tanzania cocoa beans and bought our first crop from Tenende, we found a village that had no improved water source. We found a school with no textbooks or electricity. We found students hungry, both literally and figuratively. We found farmers who had never sold their cocoa beans directly to a chocolate maker (not uncommon). So we worked to build partnerships in the community and together we achieved some successes. We had specifically sought a woman led farmer group, which we found. The Tenende cocoa farmer group was called UWATE and it was led by Mama Kyeja.

Group Travel: Since 2010 we have been bringing local high school students to this remote spot in the southwest corner of Tanzania to meet farmers, participate in a Direct Trade relationship, learn a little about cocoa beans and lot of about life. A handful of the students come from privileged families and pay for themselves and over half are full scholarship, for whom we raise money to cover all of their expenses. This August, we’ll be taking the third class of Chocolate University high school students to Tanzania.

Textbooks: We worked with the headmaster of Mwaya Secondary School (the aforementioned school with no textbooks or electricity) to identify focus subjects and purchased textbooks worth $10,000 with a grant from our local Rotary Club. They were the school’s first ever textbooks — even for the teachers.

Water: Askinosie Chocolate, along with students from Chocolate University, raised $15,000 to drill a deep water well in Tenende to provide potable water to its 2,000 citizens. Residents told us last year that because of the well, they suffered much less from waterborne diseases, cholera and typhoid, than the neighboring villages during the rainy season.

Technology: On our second Chocolate University trip we worked with the students to set up five projectors and five laptops, loaded with more than 3,000 educational Khan Academy videos, which have given teachers and students at Mwaya a new way to learn in their resource-strapped environment. There are now students with computer skills in a place where it was unimaginable just a few years ago. This was made possible by a gift from our friends at Brewer Science.

Empowered Girls Club: Our Chocolate University program, along with Convoy of Hope, funded a club for girls to learn about self-esteem, pregnancy and STDs including HIV/AIDS, goal-setting and life skills.

Lunch: Most students in Tenende came to school on an empty stomach. Their only meal was at night. So, we started an innovative school lunch program called A Product of Change™ — we buy gourmet rice from local farmers who are also Mwaya School PTA members, we ship the rice to our factory on our container of beans, sell it at a premium, and return all of the profits to the PTA to source local rice and beans to provide lunches for each student, each school day. Now, the attendance rate has improved as well as test scores and graduation rates; the benefits are plentiful.

Now for the disheartening part of the story: We purchased beans from UWATE farmer group in Tenende in 2010, 2011 and 2012. We helped them open a bank account in Tanzania so they could be paid directly. Our profit-sharing model helped our cocoa farming partner, UWATE, to diversify their business. In 2013 they decided to convert their cocoa bean warehouse into the Tenende village’s Coca-Cola depot. That’s right, Coke. They would not have the cocoa beans for us. We were devastated.

As UWATE reduced its reliance on their cocoa business, we saw benefits in working with another group of nearby farmers who are solely focused on growing cocoa — we were fortunate to find the Mababu farmer group and its leader, Mama Rahabu, in a village about 10 miles down the road from Tenende.

I actually met the Mababu farmers on my first trip to the area in 2010. The village of Mababu is not far from Tenende and UWATE farmers told us that they would be calling upon their neighbors to help supply our cocoa bean order. We buy approximately 8 to 10 metric tons of dried beans which means that 30 to 40 metric tons of wet beans are needed by farmers to meet our order. For loosely organized farmers in deep poverty who are just beginning to learn about the importance of post-harvest, calling upon neighbors makes good sense. It also builds community and cooperation.

So what does that mean for our programs in Tenende? It means a renewed focus on sustainability. During our visit there last September, we met with parents, teachers, students and government leaders to talk about how the programs can operate without outside help within five years. And we discussed the different roles that parents, teachers, students, and government will have in making this innovative, profit-based model for feeding a school to be something imitated by other schools. We are bringing our third group of Chocolate University students to Tanzania this August and while we’ll be in Mababu, we’ll also be working at Mwaya, as always. We have doubled down in our commitment to the school regardless of its distance to our new cocoa bean village. This is personal. It’s not just about business. Only one girl passed the Form 4 exam in 2013 from the entire school. We’re starting a new Saturday tutoring program aimed at 130 girls at Mwaya to prepare them for the test.

The details of the transition from Tenende to Mababu has more twists and turns than room here to describe. It was not a breakdown of communication. It was cultural and tribal with super complex layers. The first resulting emotion for me was one of sadness and disappointment. What about “kujengana — Swahili for “build each other up?” How could this be after, well, after all of the connection and partnership on important issues?

Direct Trade is messy. Community development is messy enough in my own neighborhood, but it’s exponentially messy in the developing world. It’s a good reminder for me because I know that we must change our parameters of what success means, and success here was them selling Coke, us finding this new outstanding farmer group whose beans are superb and who we’re thrilled to develop a long relationship with and that is also led by a woman.

I visited Mababu in September and representatives from my company have been there multiple times since then. The village and its farmers have proven more than capable of practicing Direct Trade with us and together we are “building each other up.” Kujengana continues.