Episode 4 — Hannes Wackerbarth: Inception

Chip (intro): My guest today, Hannes Wackerbarth, leads the Inception NGO team. Based in Germany and working primarily in Uganda, Inception is an NGO that combines education, technology, and reforestation to build a better climate and future. His vision for the Inception mission and his approach to teaming and leadership challenges traditional ideas about hierarchy and productivity. Hannes and Inception are models for building an organization which achieves impressive results and has fun doing it. And now I give you Hannes Wackerbarth.

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Chip: Hannes Wackerbarth, welcome to the Nonprofiteers podcast. Good to see you.

Hannes: Thanks for having me today.

Chip: Okay. It’s lovely to have you and thank you for accepting the invitation. Let’s start by talking a little bit about the vision and mission of Inception.

Hannes: The team in general put a lot of effort into that. So vision, mission, values, yeah. What type of NGO we want to build actually, it took us quite a while, I think even more than one year to do it properly. And we decided for a short term and a long term vision. Because, of course, we’re just starting up with an NGO that is like a startup and we have to think short term what we really wanted to do.

Hannes: But, of course, also long term what we want to do. So, the short term vision is climate education as an accelerator for reforestation communities in Green New Uganda. While on the long run, we would like to contribute to the worldwide planet rescue mission by creating thriving ecosystems for plants, animals and humans. We basically try to fulfill this vision with our mission, where we thrive on enabling and empowering environmental leaders – like in Uganda — to educate schools and communities about climate change, empowering them with training on how to grow and plant trees, meeting the teachers, the community leaders for positive climate impact and community development.

Chip: It’s a beautiful vision and mission.  Those [short and long term visions/missions] can be very different, right?

Hannes: I think it just makes sense because what we’re doing now is education and planting trees, but of course we want to do more. Planting trees and at the end of the day, if you create a habitat, you have plants and then humans can benefit in the form of fruits. So we only plant fruit trees, in order that they can’t be chopped down. I mean, they can be chopped down, but they won’t do it because they see the benefit from the tree. And lastly, of course, if you have a habitat of trees, animals will come. So, yeah.

Chip: I missed that, the fruit tree thing. That’s very smart. So you’re working in Uganda. How did you pick Uganda or how did you get started in Uganda?

Hannes: Sure. Absolutely. I started my journey four years back in Uganda, with the organization at 264 Education.  My flat mate was involved, as president, in the organization and I, got a part in building up the CRM. It was Salesforce at that time. And then I did my first, building project in Uganda  in Mbale and that was really inspiring. And then I thought, okay, I want to do that as well. And the next year I went back to actually scout a new partner for a new school. So then I had two visits in Uganda. I somehow understood how to scout the partner.  Also the new school with a new partner was basically in the process of building up.

Hannes: Then I quit my job, and decided to found something myself, and was lucky that went well. And then before my next visit in Uganda to check on the school, I actually said, okay, now is the time and you don’t have any excuses anymore, because since forever I wanted to really do something for the environment, because I think that’s absolutely crucial and key where you should put your focus in… Because if it doesn’t happen in Africa you will build schools where nobody will go in 20 years because it’s too hot. So I think the more pressing issue is environment and climate. And yeah, as I had basically all the knowledge in place, I researched a lot and I found one individual which was basically doing the tree planting in schools. Then on my third visit, I had a coffee with him and then I decided to stay for two weeks.

Chip: Wow. That’s a great story. And you’re based in Germany….

Hannes: Yep. Germany, Berlin.

Chip: And is your team — I know you have partnerships in Uganda — mostly in Germany also?

Hannes:  I see that you have to separate, so we have Inception as an organization. We are based in Germany and our team members are based all around Germany.  So everybody works in Germany in his/her free time [volunteers], you can say, and then in Uganda we have the climate and school street project, which is the project from where we have six persons in Jinja.

Hannes: And currently we are ramping up in Mbale as a new climate hub where we have people at the moment.

Chip: Tell me a little bit about the team and the culture that you wanted to cultivate. You mentioned that early on when you first started talking about vision and mission. And I think that’s terribly important. I’m glad you mentioned it because, you know, to quote Gandhi, “Be the change you want to see in the world”. You have to have a strong culture in order to do this work and do it well.  Could you say a little bit about your culture?

Hannes: Absolutely. So I think at the beginning I really needed to learn that it goes slower than I want, because everybody works with free time besides the normal job. So that was hard, but I figured that it’s much more important that everybody has fun. So you have to create an environment where it’s fun to work.

Hannes: You have great visions, but you actually really bring the PS onto the street. And most importantly, getting rid of bad conscience. We have that a lot still. I’m actually fighting with other people in the NGO and I’m always telling them, don’t apologize. It’s okay. Because when you think about it, you have a stressful job, you’re a consultant, whatever.

Hannes: Anyways, working 55 to 60 hours or even more, and then something like an NGO where you also want to work and you actually want it, but you don’t find the time, it creates stress. It creates a bad consciousness. And, I’m actually still in the process of taking that away from the people, that it’s okay.

Hannes: There are months where it’s simply not possible [to do the work as a volunteer with Inception]. And there will be months where you can do more and this is okay. And that we are all here to create a positive impact for the world and we only can do that in the long run if it’s fun and we like it because as soon as it’s stress or it’s bad feelings and they are getting connected to the NGO it won’t help us in the long run.

Chip: Yeah. That’s a great thing to be communicating as a leader because guilt and shame are operative no matter where you are, right, like you can be doing the most beneficial job you could possibly do on the planet and other people and still feel guilt and shame because you’re not doing enough, right?

Hannes: Yeah. And you always think you don’t do enough.  Lastly, we don’t really have hierarchies. So, if you have an idea and you want to do it and it makes sense, let’s go.  Everybody can basically bring ideas and I would say like a normal startup, where you don’t have any hierarchies, be really direct with communication, teams are really direct.

Hannes: So no hard feelings, honesty… a hundred percent.

Chip: Yeah. I love that model. There are questions about how you make decisions. So, what is your decision making model? Like, let’s say that the team gets together and there’s some conflict or disagreement on how to move things forward. How does that get resolved?

Hannes: I experienced that in other NGOs where I worked; it was really tough, mostly I think just egos fighting. And I can happily say that until now we haven’t had that in our organization. So, I think there are not so many tough decisions to make. And if we have tough decisions, then actually, we do an extra call for it.  Say, “Hey, that’s basically the case; I would propose that. What do you think?” And most of the time it’s been adjusting a bit into some direction, but I think it’s important that everybody has a say and everybody can raise his or her voice.

Chip: Yeah. Autocracy can be very efficient. But it’s not good for the decisions. You see what I’m saying? Like you need everyone’s input to make great decisions. That’s what you have a team for.

Hannes: Especially when they are working voluntarily, right?  Because they won’t do it in the future if they don’t agree.

Chip:  So what are some of the things that differentiate Inception?  I have some ideas about that, but I’d rather hear them from you.

Hannes: Sure. I think firstly, we are kind of a novel, combining education and climate impact. I never saw that. I’m pretty sure one or two other NGOs in the world will be there that are doing exactly the same. Then the next thing is that we don’t pay any team members in Germany.

Hannes: So inception is really voluntarily. Of course, our team members in Uganda, they are Ugandans, and they get paid. So it’s just a marketing machine in Germany. Fundraising the money and directly piping it into the project. So we don’t have overhead costs. The only overhead costs we have are finance processing fees and the software is basically a donation from a company.

Hannes: So meaning the money we get goes directly to them.  And maybe, I mean, if you compare big NGOs have overhead costs of 33 percent or more maybe. So that’s a lot actually.

Chip: Oh, sure. Because they’re employing a lot of people.

Hannes: Absolutely.  I mean, the bigger a ship gets, the more inefficient it gets, of course. And then a lot of things don’t really make sense.

Hannes: I mean, that approach is also influenced a bit from 264 education where I’ve been before. I liked that, basically the attitude. “No, we don’t send you a letter on how the kid is doing because the letter costs one euro.” It doesn’t make sense that they spend two euros. The two euros are much better applied in the project. So just applying common sense and efficiency …and, maybe, please go ahead.

Chip: No, I was just going to say, it actually makes sense to set expectations with donors like that. It’s much better.

Hannes: Absolutely. And yeah, I think we, we talked about no hierarchies and I would say maximize transparency. So we have one knowledge database (Notion) and everybody can see everything. So, and I would be open also to share it with the world.

Chip: Wow. So those are big differentiators. Total transparency, 100 percent volunteer workforce. combining climate and education in a very direct way. You could say all climate organizations do some education. But you’re directly doing it and you’re planting trees.  That’s fantastic. So since the start of Inception, what have been some of the tough periods for you? The challenging periods, you know, what were the difficult things that you had to get past?

Hannes: So I think funding actually was incredible tough. Because at the beginning in Germany, you have to get seven people together to found an NGO.

Chip:  Okay.

Hannes: So you have to get seven people. And, I think also in that process my co co-founder, she did it for me, helping me, but not intrinsically for the cause. Which was a problem, of course, in the long run. So that was one issue, but I think even harder was that I’ve been there [to Uganda]. I know when I saw the project, everything was a hundred percent clear in my mind about how to build everything, which is still not yet totally done, and transferring that mindset to all the people which are joining is super hard because you tell them and you think, “okay, they got it”, but they can’t really get it emotionally because they haven’t seen it.

Hannes: They haven’t been there. So I think this understanding that you actually need to do so much more sessions and talk about the issues with them …in general, I should have done this more. And due to that, of course, it’s moving slow because people don’t have the same clarity as you. So, patience, I think was the learning out of that. That was a tough time. Absolutely.

Chip: Yeah. It’s interesting. Patience is one of the things that, you know, one of the other nonprofit leaders that I interviewed said was one of her top three recommendations to people who are leading nonprofits or NGOs. You have to be patient and look at the long arc of your work for a lot of reasons, but it’s a tribute to you that you now have an organization with a strong culture, nonhierarchical, where good decisions are being made.

Hannes: Absolutely.

Chip:  And so it sounds like that’s one of the things that was a course correction was just to communicate more.

Hannes: Yes, and I think the real game changer then was the next October basically. So we founded it at end of December and then in October, we had the first onsite in Uganda with the team members and they saw it. We did create video material, everything. So I think after that, it was clear. “Ah, okay. This is actually what we’re doing.”

Hannes: They got emotionally involved into the project. And, of course such a visit also gives you a high as an organization for the next two months.  Because people are just like, it was an amazing experience. Let’s do it. It’s always October we go there now, we always get into the high, and then actually after Christmas — Jan Feb — you’re in the low because people need to recharge and have some free time again.

Chip: Yeah, that’s super smart. There are people who are back-office as well. I’ve mentioned this in other interviews, but when I was a CIO CTO at Mercy Corps, and I’d just gotten started, the CEO immediately sent me to Ethiopia.  I hadn’t been there for a even a few days and he immediately sent me to Ethiopia because I think he knew it would be motivating and fascinating and engaging and, you know, help with my own energy level.

Hannes: Absolutely. You always have that topic about should you waste the money on the flight or should you rather donate it from an altruistic standpoint? Of course, it’s clear, but I think what may be even more important than the donation is that you’ve been there, that you’ve been emotionally involved, that you understand what’s really happening there.  You have an experience for your lifetime and you are involved much longer. So I think it’s actually super important to go and to see for yourself.

Chip: Couldn’t agree more. And as the director, you can only communicate so much. It’s good to have beneficiaries and people in the field communicating too, right?

Hannes:  Absolutely, yeah.  We’re just ramping up volunteering now at the moment.

Chip: Oh, is that right? Tell me about that and how you engage. How do you recruit your volunteers? Because that’s another unusual aspect of your organization that you’re a 100 percent volunteer force….

Hannes: Ah, which volunteers do you mean?  Sorry, to make it clear. So of course every member of Inception is a volunteer. Because he/she basically donates the time spent on the project, but I just talked about volunteering for everybody from around the world in the project in Uganda.

Chip: Let’s talk about those volunteers, the volunteers that are not in Germany, the non-staff program volunteers.

Hannes: Yeah. So, I think “volunteer work” — it’s called where you have all those projects and you basically can go there, sleep for free and you work for five, six hours on the project. And yeah, so we got verified. Finally, we’re just ramping up the process internally. And we already have the first volunteers.

Hannes: So actually it’s running faster than we are as an organization already, but, that’s fine. And then the classic stuff, I mean, we have a lot of material about Uganda, about things you should know when you go there. As doing a survey afterwards, getting more in touch with them so that we can actually also get a certain view on the project and we can also react; maybe they tell us something we didn’t see before, or they have great ideas for new projects and they want to donate money.

Chip: Yeah. How do you do your fundraising?

Hannes: Interesting. It’s a mix of recurring donations which are B2C [and bigger fundraisers].  This is a small amount and then we had one big Christmas fundraiser this year for the new hub in a Mbale…. where I think they collected 5, 000.  It will happen this year again, then we kick off carbon offsetting;  voluntary carbon offsetting.

Hannes: You could say now that we are basically also trying to get the first funds in planting trees and getting donations for that. And we just ramped up our fundraising team of four people where we now basically start applying for all foundations in Germany that are there, which operates outside of Europe, which is actually not so common to be honest.  So we struggle to find proper foundations that really want to do something in climate and in education in Africa.

Chip: Yeah. And so it sounds like your donor pool is pretty diverse. You have individual donors, and you get grants.  Do you have any big donors, that you rely on for big donations?

Hannes: I wouldn’t say so. I have a transparency page on [the website], it’s still in German. I need to translate it. We need the transparency page for one pitch for our foundation. So I have to translate it. You can read everything there. So you, I think you even have to name companies or persons if they gave you more than 10 percent in a year and I think it’s just one company.  It was 18, 000 in the first year and it was nine months and they gave three for Christmas. It’s actually a client of the agency. And, they just heard that we do a Christmas fundraiser and then they donated.

Chip: Yeah. It’s interesting. A lot of people that end up doing nonprofit work — I won’t say a lot, but I’ve met quite a few that — started in marketing.

Hannes: I mean, it is kind of marketing, right? If we talk about — especially what we do know with a developing country like Uganda — you have a marketing machine on the front.  You need a nice website, you need a nice design, you need a nice tone of voice. So we really worked a lot on our communication guidelines and principles.  A lot because I was always, I don’t care. I want bold communication. I don’t care if 50 percent thinks, “what’s wrong with those guys, which words are they using? That’s too aggressive.” I think now it’s a bit less polish, but I like still like the tone of voice and, yeah, so I think it’s a lot of marketing in the end.

Chip: Yeah, I love the tone of your website. It’s engaging. It’s not stodgy. It’s informal. It’s everyday language.  I think that appeals to more people in the modern world than the older ways.

Hannes: Yeah, sure. Chata is doing all the communication. She did a great job pulling me back when I was too bold.

Chip: Yeah. So what are the principles that you bring to bear? You’ve already suggested some of them; it feels like democratic values and transparency are kind of infused into the culture, but what are some of the other principles that you bring to bear in your work?  You know, every day.  It could be in the finance work, or could be in the program work, etc.  What are leadership principles that you think are very critical for you and for the organization?

Hannes:  Authenticity is the most important thing. I heard it’s even like the highest frequency of all. So if you really authentic, everybody will feel it. Your team will feel it. And you will win a lot.  Especially in the long run, maybe not on the short, but [definitely] in the long run.

Hannes:  [On feedback], I think we’re not doing it so much in the NGO. I have to pay better attention, but I think what’s really important is feedback. And normally you say, “Five times good feedback, one time criticism.”  So it is important to say ”thank you” or to say “great job guys”.  Especially the marketing team gets it a lot.

Hannes:  And the social media team, because they really do kick-ass, I love it.  It’s incredible what quality they have. We actually plan to hire some more videographers to really shoot them out  [videos] like machine. I think it’s important that you feel valued, that your work feels valued.

Chip: Yeah. I don’t know if you knew it, but authentic leadership is its own leadership model these days.  There are different models of leadership; authoritative leadership, servant leadership, affiliative leadership, and there’s authentic leadership. And so authenticity is big.

Chip: What is that to you? What does being authentic mean to you?

Hannes: I think my personality type — I’m a debater …. — you get what you see. So I speak always super directly, super straight, super honest. In the business context, it’s incredible good and it’s been great for me, but I think still sometimes people can’t take honesty.

Hannes: So in the business context, you always need to give them a bit of guidance and say, “Hey, I’m not here to – it’s not personal — I just want to help you and bring it to the next level.”  ….But I think authenticity means also to be direct and to sometimes not hurt people, but be direct and say, “Hey, that’s not okay.”  But in a nice way.

Chip: Yeah, I think that’s a false dualism. The idea that you can’t be direct without being offensive.  I would argue that being direct is the best way; direct is the content and the form is different. Right? So if you’re rude [the form], and you’re direct, that’s not helpful. But if you’re compassionate and direct, that’s the best possible way to be….

Hannes: I think so, and I hope so.

Chip: Yeah, yeah. And built into that [being direct] is honesty and a bunch of other virtues. What are some of the… you know, every leader has leadership strengths and weaknesses…. What are the weaknesses that you feel that you have? And the strengths that you feel that you have, so that you shore up [your weaknesses] with other members of the team.

Hannes: Sure. I always think it will go faster than it is. It’s always ” everything is fast”, of course.

Chip: I’m laughing because you mentioned patience earlier and that’s a Type A personality trait [wanting to go fast].  That’s pretty common, right?

Hannes:  Absolutely. I think the next thing is — which I slowly have gotten under control now — I always have ideas and then basically there is the pit. That you start with new ideas, but you don’t finish the old ones. That is super dangerous for me.  But I’m really aware of that because, I mean, you can’t really progress if you don’t finish something up.

Hannes: I think I’m extremely strong in structuring stuff; setting up processes. On the other hand, I hate to follow those processes, even my own, so it’s a big weakness of mine.  How do you say…  like it cages me – processes – so following rules, following authority is not really my thing.

Chip: Yeah, interesting. When I was in software, in the private sector and in nonprofit sector, working with people who wrote a lot of code (coders), I figured out there were two kinds of coders: there were the creators and there were the polishers.  Creators would — as soon as they saw the light at the end of the tunnel, as soon as their design was finished and they knew it could be implemented – want to move on to something else.

Chip: And the polishers would fix every software bug, even though no customer would ever see them.  They just wanted the code to be perfect, you know, so it sounds like there’s a little bit of that that you’re describing.

Chip: A lot of leaders like the vision stuff and they like the creation part and they like moving on to the next thing. But you can shore up that issue with people on your team that like working in the details and that enjoy the process.

Hannes: Absolutely. I mean, actually, one of my co-presidents is also my business partner and he’s exactly the counterpart. So one other weakness of mine is I’m just fast in doing stuff.  I can work really fast, but I’m not paying attention to details. And if he finishes it up, he of course will find them [mistakes] and make it perfect.

Hannes: So it’s always important to find the people which love what you hate. It sounds crazy…

Chip: No, I think that’s a basic tenant of good leadership.  You want your entire approach to be comprehensive. You want to cover all the bases and one person just can’t do that. It’s impossible.  Even if you have a ton of strengths and very few weaknesses as a leader. There are still knowledge gaps, so you need those people.

Hannes: Absolutely. And the right people. I figured they need to have ownership responsibility. Also you need the right mix of creators, but also of operators. Because if you just have creators and it will be hard to finish something up and vice versa.

Chip:  Right now, what are the biggest challenges that you’re facing down in moving forward?

Hannes:  Hmmm.  In general, e have to separate it; challenges in Germany and challenges in Uganda.  Challenges in Uganda are basically ramping up in Mbale. So I think we did a great job.  Now, since beginning of the year we now have two employees. It’s really running. It’s actually running crazy good. So we, we will plan the streets of Mbale because the sustainability officer of Mbale is a big fan of our project. We had the chance to speak in front of all of the head teachers in Mbale. So we have a plan. A big network already, but this was one challenge. I think now the next big, big challenge is we need to diversify and we tried already with community planting.

Hannes:  [This means] not just going to schools, but also communities was tough because it was really political at the beginning. Now we have a new approach and it seems to work and it’s so important because the first time we go to a school, we can plant a lot of trees, but the second time when we do the next class one year later, there’s not so much space anymore for planting trees, and that means our impact is decreasing. This is why now we actively need to go into communities in order to ensure that our impact stays somehow stable. In the form of trees, of course.

Hannes:  And when it comes to Germany, it’s raising funds. So all in all, it looks good; we are safe until the end of the year already. But of course we have big visions. We want to start with fruit tree gardens where we buy some hectares. Planting a lot of fruit trees, maybe also close to a National Reserve where animals can immediately pass after some years. Secondly, ramping up the teams. We have no hierarchies, but still I would like to establish a new management level. Basically all people which have been in the NGO for two years now would get their own team because it’s voluntary work. We need more people in order to achieve more. And this is the biggest challenge: to find the right people that really have the intrinsic motivation to work. We always say 10 hours a month in each department, be it marketing operations, tech, whatever.

Hannes: We are 13-14 now, and I really would like to ramp it up to 20-22 by end of this year. And this is the biggest challenge, I guess.

Chip: That’s a good step. Kind of experiment a little bit with scale.

Hannes: So I really figured, let’s take the marketing team. I think every company would envy our marketing team. It’s incredible.  We have a copywriter, we have a UX designer who actually builds the website. We have another designer. I worked years with them.

Hannes: Then we have [someone] making strategies for videos, but he actually is also a creator and he can cut the videos as well. So we have an incredible team, but still they can’t produce the output we would need — the high quality output we would need — they can do it for one or two months, but not longer. And I think if you can get three, four more people that really want to move something and they cut two videos every month, that would be amazing.

Hannes: And then you are really at the point where you say, okay, that department continuously delivers quality, top notch content. This is why I think it’s so important to get the scaling, which is super difficult because you have to protect your core, who you are, the values, etc; it has to fit.  And also you have to onboard them in less time because we all work [on other things] so much; I think that’s a challenge, but I hope we can achieve it.

Chip: Do you have volunteers doing HR related stuff for you like recruiting?

Hannes: Nope, not yet.

Chip: That might be a direction to think about, right?

Hannes:  Absolutely. So I think we will try it now with the videographers. So I would love to get three or four to create one reel a month; we’re currently basically writing down the onboarding and the process because you have videographers, which can only cut. Some can really think about the story, storyline and do everything. We will see. Then we all do LinkedIn posts and we will see what comes back. And if not, I will get the HR person.

Chip: And by the way, let me put in a plug for your website. It’s gorgeous. So anyone who’s watching and listening, the website is www.inception.green; go there and see what a gorgeous, effective website should look like and behave like.  It’s fantastic!

Hannes: Thank you. Thank you. Of course, directly to the marketing team. Amazing job.

Chip: If you had to name one or two things or three things that give you the greatest satisfaction in day to day work, what would they be?

Hannes: Day to day work?  It’s hard. I think I have one, two, three, maybe in my mind. I think in Uganda, when I’ve been there, that was the greatest satisfaction I got.  So you have to envision we have 16 members there and they are not the presenting kind of guys. And when we were driving to a school, I was like, can you make it?  Because [the presenter] was really calm and really shy….

Hannes: When he was standing in front of the class, he did it perfectly from A to Z. And, in my eyes, he was more [than I expected]. He’s also called a tree officer, not a climate education officer. Seeing that after one year even the tree offices can actually do the full climate session with excellence.

Hannes: I was so happy to see that. Secondly… I think sometimes it’s really hard — as somebody who envisions something – to eventually stop and look back and realize it’s not an idea anymore. It’s actually really happening every day. This is absolutely beautiful.  You can’t pay money for that. So sometimes when I go into the calls and I see all the faces, I’m just happy because somehow we managed to bring this crazy bunch of people together, who are crazy enough to dedicate their time to this cause.

Chip:  Well, it must be very satisfying to run a volunteer workforce and have that kind of engagement.

Hannes: Yeah. I’m actually looking forward to the offsite when they are coming to Berlin. I think in June, July… it will be fun.

Chip:  So this is a question I ask every nonprofit leader. What are the three biggest learnings that you’ve distilled from your experience? What would you pass on to someone else who’s running an NGO or nonprofit?

Hannes: I think at the end of the day, you are a founder. If you found a company or an NGO, it’s similar. Keep going, just keep going. It’s incredibly hard at the beginning because most of the people won’t get what [are doing].  Even the people who want to do it with you…. Not a hundred percent will get what you mean, because it’s mostly in your head.  So keep going, and take breaks. If you can’t see the project, take a break for two, two weeks, one month, whatever, and then get back to it because it’s worth it at the end.  And secondly, I think we discussed it before as well, um, the right people.

Chip: Yeah.

Hannes: It’s extremely important to find the right people who are intrinsically motivated for the course, and those people need to be able to take ownership and responsibility for the department. I still have some departments which are not properly set up.  This is mainly because I didn’t find yet the right person, who is actually taking ownership, a hundred percent and driving it in the right direction. So I think if you want to build something great, you need some HR.

Hannes:  The faster you find those people, the faster you will be. I think I’m also still doing my baby steps.  Lastly, be an expert at what you do.  If you don’t have the knowledge, get the knowledge, especially if you work in developing countries. So we had instruction in our first get to know you call. If you work in developing countries, you need to know every unique economic issue.

Hannes: It’s absolutely crucial. If you don’t know the economics, you will pay much too much [for services and resources].

Hannes: Um,

Chip:  Interesting. So those are great: Persistence, focus on getting the right people on board. and know your work, particularly the country if you’re working in a developing country. Fantastic. Hannes, it’s been so much fun interviewing you.

Hannes: Thank you. Likewise. I really enjoyed it.

Chip:  Is there anywhere else that people should go to plug in?  Say someone’s interested in your climate work or being a donor.  We can send them to the website and it will be in both the article and this podcast; www.inception.green.  Any other way that people could plug into your work?

Hannes: Three ways.  Of course donation.  Secondly, get involved. Write me a message.  As you heard, I really want to grow the team. If you want to dedicate 10 hours a month, you’re welcome to join us. And lastly, go there to Uganda to help and get emotionally involved.

Chip: As an aside, I happen to know some videographers, so I may send some folks your way who are very good and the ones that I know do the whole thing from A to Z. They do the filming, editing, everything; they know all about it.

Hannes: We have a lot of content already, but they are of course invited to come to Uganda to film.

Chip: Yeah, great. Take care best of luck to inception; we will stay in touch.

Hannes: Thank you. Have a great night.