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Iron Will Behind The Iron Curtain

Wharton alum Anne Kalin's uncanny success in Poland is a model for entrepreneurs in emerging markets

Perhaps the strangest thing about the decision of Anne Kalin (WG'91) and her husband, John Lynch (WG'89) to stay in Poland was how easy it was. They had plenty of opportunities for well-paying jobs back home in the United States. But after spending a year in Poland in the early 1990s, they knew they wanted to start a company there. Their firm, Krakow-based Lynka Promotional Products, began in 1992 and has risen to become one of Europe's leading promotional merchandise and marketing services companies.

"It might have been a little naïve and crazy, but that's the entrepreneurial spirit that we have. Some people accuse entrepreneurs of being too optimistic, but our optimistic, carefree attitude led us to where we are today."

They'd moved to Poland as part of the MBA Enterprise Corps, a program that places newly minted MBAs in developing countries. As part of the Enterprise Corps, which still exists, the MBAs spend a year working in local companies and are paid local wages. When their year ended, Kalin, who graduated from Wharton in 1991, and Lynch, who'd finished in '89, had student loans to repay. That didn't hold them back; they both were ready to be their own bosses.

Their optimism and unending hard work has turned Lynka into an entrepreneurial success. It's a multimillion-dollar business with more than 150 employees. Equally important, working and living in Poland let Kalin and Lynch watch the evolution of the newly created free-market economies of the former Soviet Bloc. They not only witnessed but participated in one of the most significant historical developments of the last 50 years.

Kalin believes they succeeded in Poland partly because they learned to speak Polish. Too many American business people don't, and they suffer. "If you always have to go through an interpreter or surround yourself with high-ranking executives who speak English, you're never going to know the truth about the company you're managing."

As they learned the language, it became clear that one word would be more important than others. That word was "no," and they had to use it frequently with local officials' seeking bribes. "I tell people, ‘Do not bribe, ever.' If you do, they own you, and you get yourself locked into a pattern. You'd be surprised at the Fortune 100 companies who have purchasing agents in Poland who are bribing."

Kalin and Lynch's unwillingness to bribe made dealing with customs officials challenging. They found Lynka's shipments were frequently delayed because of alleged paperwork problems. So they committed to preparing their documents as perfectly as possible.

"One thing that's interesting with all of these former communist countries is that they have all these bureaucratic procedures and rules. But that means that when somebody gets to your stack of paper, if it meets the rules, he must process it."

Unlike bribery, the frustrations that banks cause entrepreneurs in Poland are little different from those in the States. Kalin's wrangles with Lynka's bank led her to formulate one of her iron rules of entrepreneurship: Banks stink.

"Banks aren't your friends," she explains. "This is especially true when local banks get purchased by someone who doesn't understand the local market." One of Lynka's banks, for example, drastically raised fees on a particular financial instrument after such a purchase. Kalin and Lynch got the fee reduced but not to its original level. "We've been with that bank for 12 years. Fees should go down after so many years, not up."

Though the Polish economy is young, Poles could teach Americans a few things about business, too, Kalin says.

"They have a saying, ‘Guest in the house, God in the house.' There's no meeting in Poland where there isn't a little plate of cookies on the table — you can always tell how well a company is doing by the quality of the cookies. And you're always given a cup of coffee or tea on china, no paper stuff. I don't need the cookies but there's something about the graciousness that I miss when I'm here."

Kalin and Lynch travel back to the United States frequently; they have a house in Pennsylvania. When she's in the States, she often finds her thoughts turning to Poland. Many of her most vivid memories aren't the momentous events but the mundane ones — like the way she learned to recognize the approach of a Polish holiday.

The couple's condo in Poland has a balcony that overlooks a courtyard. Early on, while working in their home office, she heard a loud whack outside, went to the balcony and saw a neighbor in the courtyard, beating the dust out of a carpet. "Before Polish holidays you're supposed to clean your house really well. I could always tell when a holiday was coming because I'd hear that whack."

Another signal was the steaming pots that would pop up on her neighbors' balconies. "In the cooler months, they'd use the balconies as a second refrigerator because, when you're cooking for 29 relatives, you don't have any room in your tiny little refrigerator."

Likewise, she learned to love the Pole's fascination with bees, even though she's allergic to their stings. "They're very proud of their natural areas and their bees, and their hives are these intricately carved things that I'd liken to totem poles. There's one place where I take my walks, and this little old man is always out there checking on his bees, blowing puffs of smoke in and working with the hives. I could just watch him for hours."

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