Five years ago, Justin Zigbuo left a comfortable life in the United States to return to his native Liberia to start a business making building blocks out of pressed and cured earth and using them for construction projects. The growing enterprise now employs more than 400 people, and his projects can be seen around the capital, Monrovia, and beyond. After he got the business going and readied accommodation, his wife joined him with their four children, who attended local Liberian schools. The family is temporarily back in the United States, as the oldest children – twin sons - prepare to attend college.
We are going to see if they do well; then she will come when they go to college. But if she doesn't feel comfortable, she will let them spend at least one year in college and then she will come with the two younger kids. The two problems my wife had here were health care and education. The country has made a lot of strides in both. So next year when she does come, the country will be totally different.
The two younger kids and even the [older twin] boys – all of their needs were taken care of.
There were some things that they wanted, of course. But, overall, they were happy. The younger guy, he was four, he didn't care, he just wanted to eat! He would go out and play. The thing about Liberia is: the kids could play. In the States, you have to come home from school and go to daycare because both parents in the household work, so the kids would go to daycare. And you get home about six or seven. But here, they would come home and play. They were happy for that.
The older boys were happy because they really had the chance to participate in school, participate in a lot of extra activities. They have a love for basketball, but they couldn’t practice. They could only play in the evenings at the Y, whereas here, you have a court everywhere. As soon as you get off from school and do your homework, you can play. They didn't have McDonald's or Burger King or Wendy's, but, hey, they have Mona Lisa's [a popular pizza restaurant]! So, all in all, they were happy.
Our company has done really well over a short period of time because of hard work and honesty. And I think that has helped us a lot to be where we are now. We finished a Firestone project, building new housing for workers. After that we did a lot of work for DynCorp [which has a U.S. State Department contract to train a new army for Liberia]. We did a warehouse, an apartment and a store in Ganta [on the border with Guinea and Cote d’Ivoire] for one of the largest building material companies. We did a warehouse and some apartments for them in Buchanan [a port on the coast], and an office and warehouse at their main store in Claratown. We are doing twenty houses for Mittal Steel [one of the largest investors in Liberia] in Buchanan, but before that we did four houses and some apartment buildings. We are doing fourteen two bedroom apartments here in Monrovia in the dirt brick and are doing a four story high school. We are doing a new supermarket for a company, as well expansion work for their main store downtown.
Right now we have close to 50 salaried employees and about 400 laborers. It keeps adding on and adding on. When we do the payroll, there is so much going out. It has been hard trying to get the core group of people trained. Throughout the years of war, the work ethic for Liberians became very bad. I am Liberian, so I can say it, and no one can get upset with me, because I am talking about myself. Our brothers and sisters who are here, their work ethic is bad. We have been trying to work with them and say, you know, we can't complain about Liberians not getting a fair shake, if, when we do get the fair shake, we don't perform. We can't complain about us not getting opportunities, if, when we do get the opportunities, we don't perform as expected.
We work day, we work night, sometimes we will do two shifts. There is a problem with electricity, but if you electrify your house and watch television, you can definitely electrify a job site to work in the night. A lot of our customers like that, because we can finish the job on time. We believe in the principle: You get the job done; then you count your profits. You don't count your profits before the job is completed. The motto we have at Venture is: You never put off work you can do today for tomorrow. I think all those put together have really helped us.
The core group of people that I have, I think they have learned a lot from my experiences elsewhere, and I think that is why we are growing by leaps and bounds. We have to do a lot of basic training. I tell them the story about Antonio Stradivari, the violinist. He made violins hundreds of years ago. With all of the technology we have today, we can not make a Stradivari. And I tell them, when you do a job, make sure it is the best you can do. Make sure it is something, that when you are not there, it can represent you. I'm not always going to be there, but you are there. When you are there, you are getting paid to be there, so do the best you can do. Don't just do it and leave it. Those are principles that the people that I have working with me can live by. It has carried us a long way. A company that was established in 2004/2005 – to be where we are today amazes a lot of construction companies that have been here for ten or fifteen years.
Because of the work we have been doing, we were identified by the African Development Foundation to get a grant last year. We are still going through the granting phases now. It is a $100,000 grant to train our people, buy some equipment, help with cash flow and some expenses for professionals that we didn't have. Through the grant, we were able to hire an accountant, a business manager and a marketing manager.
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We bought 2.5 acres and we are turning it into an industrial park, a business park. We plan to move there in January. We have already invested $25,000 in machines to make door frames, doors, to dress wood. We live on the coast, where you can see how violent the salt is – a very strong part of nature. The best antidote, for windows and doors, especially, is [building with] wooden windows and doors. We want to manufacture these [wooden] windows in our industrial park.
Then we want to open up a building materials store. We see most of our profits going to the guys that are doing building materials, but they are not giving us quality materials. The profits they make are astronomical. So we will also have that open this year on a small scale.
Nothing starts big. It all starts small. It all starts with a notion. In five years, Venture should give Liberians good building materials that you can buy, durable and reasonably priced. The industrial park should be manufacturing doors, windows, fabricating zinc, doing manufacturing for the building economy. And Venture Construction, at that point, should start bidding for building bridges that are needed in Liberia. Right now, we build building of between one to four stories. In five years, we will bring in more expertise. We should be at a position where we could do twenty to thirty story buildings, which Liberia should move into in the next five years, after we have resolved the problems that we have; the President is doing a good job of that.
