Joel Lorquet the entrepreneur
I have always dreamed of investing because I think that, to have money, if you are a civil servant, if you are an employee, you will never succeed. Never. We can’t make this money grow, since we don’t have enough to invest. We can take the amount of salary we earn per month, multiply it by 40, 50 years, we will never be able to be a millionaire. But if you invest and make profits, you can invest money to expand your business. I understood this very young. So I decided to devote myself to entrepreneurship while remaining an employee. I had a good, fairly stable job. I thought, at a certain point, of resigning, as soon as I was certain that I could stand on my own with my business. But I realize now that that would have been a serious mistake because when the embargo took place, we were going through some really difficult and uncertain times. So I opted to work with an international organization, an embassy, and manage, at the same time, my own business. It was a demanding but rewarding choice. I work very late at night, sometimes until one in the morning.
One of the great lessons I learned is that it is entrepreneurship that creates wealth. My entrepreneurial career began when I was a kid, making greeting cards that I sold at Christmas. I placed them in bookstores. At the same time, orders started pouring in for my designs. My first client was the Nazarene Church of Haiti. I was the lead designer for all the children’s Sunday school booklets. I was making a lot of money at the time. Without having to take care of my family, I could still contribute to the household expenses. Many poets called on me to illustrate their poetry books. Other clients asked me to illustrate school books. It all worked very well. I also did a little painting. But it did not last.
The drawing became more and more demanding. I sometimes spent three months of vacation drawing. It is true that my talents were now known. I was a winner three times: in a competition organized by Curacoa Trading, at the time. I was 12 years old. In 1979, I was 15 years old, I won a competition organized by the Ministry of Youth and Sports. The theme of the competition was: “Child of today; Citizen of tomorrow.” I won 2,500 gourdes. I remember that Minister Théodore Achille called me, and after giving me advice, offered me a scholarship. He gave me 400 gourdes per month to study drawing. This lasted until Duvalier left in 1986. The idea had been to support a young person who was making an effort, also in his studies. He saw potential in me and decided to help and encourage me. I was blessed ever since
But I had to find something else to do. I published books that sold quite well. The first, about boat people, sold 5,000 copies. This is what allowed me to make my name at the time. It was 1981. Television and radio interviews had multiplied.
After books, I helped set up a hair salon. I helped a hairdresser friend rent space in Rue St Martin and buy the equipment he would need to get started. I didn’t last there either, but my friend remained a hairdresser and still takes care of his family with this studio. I sold him the equipment at cost. After the hairdressing salon, I created a small restaurant near the stadium, “Le Coq Roti”. It was during the coup d’état, in 1992. It didn’t go well. I closed it. I opened a grocery store on Rue Prévost: “Pi bon pri.” “. That’s when I understood that to sell rice, you need a lot of money. It’s a good business but it only brought in 10 gourdes per bag, and generated a lot of costs. I then started selling bottles of Juna. But I realized it wasn’t an interesting business.
The creation of Publi-Média
I had to find a much safer and much more lucrative area to operate. For this, I thought it was best to move towards something that fell within the scope of what I did best. And since my skills were in communication, printing, drawing, books, I decided to go into printing, which had always been my dream.
I was already operating under the name Publi-Média. Indeed, without premises, without a device, I printed business cards, wedding cards… I subcontracted orders with local printing companies like Le Nouvelliste, which gave me commissions of 10%.
My printing business started on Rue Chavannes, when the grocery store closed. I had thought, in fact, that the ideal would have been a neighborhood where there would be uninterrupted electric current, day and night. I did some research and discovered that there was a priority route which went to Carrefour-Feuille and which passed through Rue de la Réunion, Rue Chavannes, Rue Capois. I thought about it and a friend came to mind: Patrick Moussignac, from Radio Caraibes. I went to see him. He’s a really progressive guy. I explained to him that I was looking for a place to store materials to start a printing business. He offered me a space which was on the radio courtyard. It was a depot that “Jacky Karaïb” used in the past, before his death. What he offered me had everything to discourage me at first sight: a poorly maintained room, with holes in the floor and which stank. But despite this difficult approach, I cried out: “My dear, I will repair the room”. This is what I did, to his great astonishment. I even built a toilet for the employees in the back. And I started there, in 1993, with Média-Texte. In the corridor. And people came. We were behind the radio
The business took off and grew. I had to look for premises, still in the neighborhood, but moving forward. This is how I found an available space. I rented it. It was number 25. That’s where I placed the printing press. When I started, I simply had an 8 1/2 x 14 Abetik, the type of stencil machine. When I had enough customers, I purchased other devices. We started without a guillotine, with just a mini-offset.
Today, more than 15 years later, the Printing Office is equipped with truly sophisticated equipment, digital press, etc. But our ambitions go even further. The premises are air-conditioned to provide better customer service. In general, the customer who comes does not ask to see your materials. He asks to see your basic facilities, how you are received, if you are functional… In 1998-1999, I bought a property located at the corner of Oswald Durand and St Honoré streets, next to Radio-Lab . Unfortunately, this was contentious territory. I did not want to venture into a conflict since it could prove dangerous in Haiti. I prayed to the Lord and told Him that He would give me other properties. I lost the money from the acquisition of this land, which is near the consulate.
But, indeed, a few years later, I was able to obtain land on Rue de l’Enterrement and since then, we have built the ground floor. Our project is to build 2 floors, set up a telephone sales department or a currency exchange agency, etc… The problem is that, having not used bank credit, it took me a while to get where I am and I still have to be patient to realize these projects. The good part of this is that I can sleep peacefully. I’m not saying that banking isn’t useful. No, it is not a bad thing to apply for a bank loan. Indeed, for certain opportunities we need to find liquidity quickly but we must be sure of being able to meet deadlines and repay. But when we choose this means, it must never be for leisure and consumption but always for business.
Today we have three Offset devices, including an “Abetik” with 2 heads, 18 x 12 format. We also have a new invention, the Digital Press. It is a press like the Offset which can print in a few seconds in 4 colors: 100% digital and fast printing. This is what we use for book covers now. We have a guillotine, we have a “swallowing” device. We don’t have the large equipment of large printing companies, but fortunately, technology makes it just as easy to make beautiful prints inexpensively.
We also have our own publication which is also our advertising organ: The Consumer Guide, which is comparable to the Montreal Commercial Guide. The articles covered therein are purely commercial. It is distributed first to our sponsors and free of charge where there are meetings of people. When we put brochures in a supermarket, they are removed very quickly. Our prices have not changed in 17 years. 7,500 gourdes for a page. However, our very affordable prices are not enough to encourage sponsors to offer us their advertising.
How is Joel holding up financially?
Média-Texte largely allows me to take care of my family. We have around fifteen employees and contract workers. We specialize in books and we have built a loyal clientele of writers, who have chosen us as their printing house. We hold on, despite winds and tides
Média Texte makes it a code of honor not to print falsified works. Small printing companies abound in Haiti, but most happily accept this type of contract, reproducing school works for example, without the formal authorization of the authors. We refuse plagiarism. We also refuse to print publications of a pornographic, immoral or voodoo nature. It is again a grace of God that we have been able to succeed so far by avoiding contracts contrary to our religious and moral principles. It’s a question of conscience first.
Entrepreneurs are often described as ambitious, selfish, insensitive… Tell us how Joël Lorquet, the Christian entrepreneur, is perceived?
Like an ambitious person, yes, but in a good way. Being ambitious, for me, means: Being dynamic, having the desire to succeed, wanting to break through, wanting to have your share of the market, but in a good way. I’m not ambitious in the sense of being greedy and wanting everything for myself, and enriching myself at the expense of others, but in a good way. With dynamism and high standards. This is my conception of entrepreneurship, which I subordinate to my conscience. It’s okay to want to become someone. But let it be through effort, through study, through work. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting to succeed financially. A wealthy Christian can help the church, give good offerings, pay tithes, and achieve many things. So if there is an economic force in the evangelical sector, we could even consider the creation of a Christian, evangelical economic chamber, with Christian businessmen, with other approaches, not to make money. only, but to help the community, go into the social sector. I am for this Gospel, this preaching which says that: “If we serve God properly, we will be blessed economically. »
This is my vision. If you are a Christian, you can only be blessed. God is the Master of the world. He is the richest being. It’s the King! Money and wealth belong to God. If God is my Father, if I truly serve him, it is normal for him to give me money. He will never let me stay in a situation where I have to beg for alms. In Haiti, to survive, people tend to come to you and ask you for money. It’s a big problem. We receive around ten people a day, more numerous than the customers… They parade here, and ask for charity. He has a problem paying his school fees. This lady has a sick baby, this old man needs money to buy medicine… Frankly, we have become a Ministry of Social Affairs. At Rue Chavannes, we did not have this problem. Not as much, anyway. I wonder if the country’s problems have gotten worse because I can’t understand why there are all these beggars parading. We give them 500 gdes, 1000 gdes… They come back a few days later. It’s a subscription! I believe that if we are Christian, we must, on the contrary, always have resources, we will always be blessed, we must always have enough food, enough money to share with others. That’s how I see it. But for that I think you have to be ambitious. Again, in a good way. Not to enrich oneself by performing bad deeds but by remaining a pious Christian, an exemplary Christian, a model, for the young people who observe us, for the community in general
What can we blame Joel Lorquet for?
I don’t know. There may be rumors. But, apart from the fact that there is someone who has the same name as me and whose bad behavior is sometimes attributed to me, I can only be blamed for being dynamic, for being a touch -to everything, to have the madness to succeed, the will to succeed by all legitimate means. People will say about me that I am different from others,… and that I like to express myself in French. (laughs) But, thank God, I succeeded in everything I did, writing, printing…. Honestly. I can say that I am blessed. And I say that this attack of which I was recently the victim in Santo Domingo, where God saved my life, was a manifestation of God’s love for me. What more ?
What advice could Joel give to young people?
To work very hard to succeed and to refuse to follow the trends proposed by the world to get rich. How sad when we know that in Haiti, it is difficult to find a 14 year old girl who is not already sexually involved, sometimes with several people. I exhort young people, boys and girls, to lead a godly life. To please God. Because there are many blessings awaiting them if they have the fear of God. I urge them to be interested in spiritual things, to continue their studies as far as possible, to avoid contrary currents, sterile associations, the companionship of negative people whose only aim is to divert them from good, to try to stay on the right path, to ask God to give them the means to resist temptations. It is better to choose dry bread with a clear conscience than to find yourself in front of a well-stocked table and with no appetite, because your conscience blames you for what you did to have this food.
I invite young people to be patient. Today, they are in a hurry to drive a Mercedes, to have a big house, to show… In the past, society was a safeguard because what made you someone respected was not your money, but the fact that you are a moral, upright, good man. From now on, society no longer questions behavior. What interests him is that Mr. X has a nice car, but he doesn’t care how he got it. She goes so far as to doubt the honesty of those who make efforts to remain consistent with themselves. We will say for example: “Se sou blòf Misye ye!” L’ap pran pòz moun de byen li! Swa li nan dyab…”
I learned that to honestly succeed, you have to work. Today, people want to arrive quickly. They are ready to do anything, but they forget the consequences. You can have money in three days. But you can also stupidly go to prison for a bad choice. We can be killed too. I learned to believe in success through effort. Here at the Imprimerie, after 17 years of existence, we could have gone further, but we want to go slowly but surely. I believe in progress, success, but step by step. Everything in its time. The Bible, in proverbs, teaches us these things. We see what happened with those who were in too much of a hurry. They must love God with all their hearts. They must not be hypocrites, who want to show society that they are good, while they are in conflict with themselves, with their conscience. May the message conveyed with the mouth materialize in facts, in action, in gestures. In other words, we achieve what we preach. For me, this is the only path to true success, success in the right direction, to be able to become models for society.
And then, you have to know that, paradoxically, it is risky, in a country like Haiti, to live hypocritically. You can lie for a year, two years, three years, but sooner or later, the truth will come out about your duplicity. And there will soon be evidence that will degrade you everywhere. So, it is better to lead a decent life, and that way we will be at peace with our conscience, at peace with ourselves, at peace with others, and above all at peace with God.
What is Joel Lorquet’s secret for having succeeded in 17 years of entrepreneurship?
I think I owe it in large part to what I received from scouting, the movement I joined when I was eleven, from Jean-Marie Guilloux. I was a scout at St. Louis de Gonzague. I left in 1989, that is to say, a good twenty years of scouting. But we are scouts for life. Scout thoughts combine with biblical principles. We can pair them. Scouting is a training school that teaches young people to be serious, to be rigid, to be upright, to accomplish at least one good deed every day, to have a spirit of service, to share, to have a single word, not to lie. I was blessed to have been a Boy Scout. I have instilled these principles in others, not only through the church, but also through Scouting itself.
I was blessed in the friends that God put in my path who shared the same point of view as me. Very often, in life, when you fail, it’s a friend who makes you fail, because he advises you to do bad things and you follow him. In life, you have to be a leader. This is how we avoid following contrary trends. And rather lead people to follow you on the right road, and among other things, on the path to church
Success requires leadership. When you stop being a leader and become a follower. This is the first step of failure. A bad leader will lead you down the wrong path. If we are on the right path today, we must stay there. But if we are on the wrong path, we must turn away from it to take the right path which leads to all the positive results we know.
My secret can be summed up as follows: it is to have been disciplined from a young age, to have been ambitious in the right way, to have had this euphoria of succeeding in life, and to have maintained this madness of to be a good man, an upright man, a chaste man who subsequently became a faithful man to his wife. Like all young people, I have had many requests to betray my convictions. But the grace of God sustained me, prayer kept me. It’s not easy being young. We receive a lot of pressure and requests. Even pressure. What pride when we were able to emerge victorious from these challenges?
I want to encourage young people in our churches to want to succeed by appropriating this secret: Discipline, Seriousness, Madness – I repeat – of succeeding in everything. You have to have the dream of coming out of somewhere and arriving very far. I only managed to achieve a small percentage of my goals myself. Because we live in a difficult country, very hard, and marked by imponderables, a country which does not encourage those who have ambitions, aims, visions, plans… I am proud to be able to affirm, however, that in despite pitfalls, difficulties, roadblocks, discouragements, and perhaps even ironies, I was able to succeed. (…) So you too, young people, success is within your reach. And you too can become a model for the community, a reference for the evangelical world
One last word ?
I ask everyone who reads me to pray for me in this sense, because prayer is the greatest force that exists. This attack during which God manifested himself powerfully in my life in December 2008, in Santo Domingo, marked a decisive turning point for me. He alone knows why He said to me: “I grant you life”. I need prayers for protection. But my greatest request is that God can keep me on this path that I have chosen, this path which is not easy, that of following Jesus and being a sincere evangelical leader
And to you who read me, and who are thinking of leaving the right path, I say: “Come back! » For there are many blessings in the path of the Christian life. It is not easy, but I invite you to hold on, to hold firm despite winds and tides, because what awaits us tomorrow as blessings, as rewards, is worth much more than the ephemeral consolations that we find outside the path of the Gospel. I encourage every Haitian to become a Christian because it is the Gospel alone that can transform Haiti. Let’s imagine that every Haitian would be a Christian… We would have a completely changed country, because it is to us, the Christians, who have been entrusted with the mission of making a difference, and this, from all points of view.
And then I will tell every Haitian not only to try to work for an employer, but to remember that each of us is a potential investor. Let’s start by brainstorming ideas, making a list of our possibilities, and starting with what little we have. Even with a “bin” of sourettes or “fritailles”. Let’s start with something. It is by becoming an entrepreneur that we can understand what is good about entrepreneurship: it is that we can start from nothing to get very far, as long as we really put our minds to it and we are very disciplined.
Interview: Jose Bautista
Edited by: Pascale Duplan Montfort
