Entrepreneurs never fail. They earn, or they learn.

They do, however, need to perfect the art of the pivot.

When we get back from spring break, our next class in Entrepreneurship for Lawyers will focus on pivoting. We’ll do theater exercises that require the players to suspend their expectations, surrender their fear of venturing into the unknown, and make things up as they go along.

Pivoting Bujuuko Foundation

My co-founders and I need this lesson as much as anyone.

In 2016, colleagues from Uganda and I started Bujuuko Foundation as a way to give back to the many talented kids in school there who need support to realize their potential.

Over the next four years, we worked with Bujuuko High School in a village outside of Kampala to pioneer a new model of youth development. Through entrepreneurship competitions and international peer mentorship, we helped kids build meaningful skills while competing for the grand prize: one year of school fees for the entire winning team.

We had run and refined our model three times and were poised to develop further — when COVID hit in 2020 and shut down all international travel. Schools in Uganda, which received vaccines very late, remained shuttered long after we’d adapted here in the U.S.

teambuilding and friendraising

In the meantime, all the co-founders’ lives profoundly changed — marriages, births, COVID-related family separations, crazy professional demands. Even as international travel resumed, our hopes for Bujuuko Foundation sometimes appeared out of reach.

We thought about giving up … but we knew the kids needed support more than ever with the rising global economic and health challenges. And we knew we had a promising model.

We agreed to commit to another key entrepreneurship skill: teambuilding and “friendraising.” Each of us talked to friends who might be interested in our ideas, and to potential partners who might offer resources we lacked.

Today, we met on Zoom for our 2024 Q1 board meeting. One of my colleagues reported on some conversations he recently had with a potential new partner. While these are merely exploratory talks at this point, this type of new partner could revitalize, even turbo-boost our efforts.

If these conversations bear fruit, we may not only succeed in pivoting Bujuuko Foundation, but we’ll have a great case study in how the Entrepreneurship Method and Mindset can work in action!