The Afropreneur

Everyone (that I know of) goes into any endeavour with the intention of succeeding or winning. What does success mean to you? Why do so many people fail?

This podcast is 100% my thoughts, please share yours in the comment section

This episodes features Wonuola Olatunde-Lamidi, an award winning travel consultant. She has been featured on media platforms like Silverbird TV, Arise TV, The Spark, Social Media Week among others. She was also voted top 100 inspiring women in Nigeria, as well as top 100 Tourism personalities.

This episode features Sonia Nzekwe, a brand and content manager. She is obsessed with creating digital experiences that birth loyal brand-consumer relationships. Let’s see how many questions she can answer.

Why is the mental health of entrepreneurs (and generally) so ignored in Africa? How can we manage our mental health as we navigate the world of business?

Today I had a chat with Blessing Abeng, a multi-faceted creative driven by the need to create lasting solutions to key problems faced by individuals, and SMEs. As a brand strategist, communications manager and entrepreneur, Blessing creates unforgettable experiences that reflect the personality of brands and converts strangers to loyal customers, friends, and community members.

There is so much buzz about Lion Heart – the first Netflix original film produced in Nigeria, and directed by Nollywood actress, Genevieve Nnaji. While the movie was such a breadth of fresh air, we decided to pick business lessons from it (just like we did with Game of Thrones).

Here are some lessons we learned from Lion Heart:

* Collaboration! it is better to own a bit of something then all of nothing

* Learn to harness the power of negotiation

* Don’t run your business in isolation, institute a corporate governance structure for your business.

* Have a succession plan, train your staff!

* Be open to learning, and building your credibility. See difficulties as opportunities to build credibility.

* Believe in yourself. When people don’t believe in you, don’t get angry and make enemies of them, revenge by being successful. Your work will speak for you.

* Don’t change the essence of your business (brand promise) even when faced with difficulties.

* Listen, listen, listen!! Listen to your customers, listen to your staff.

* A contract should not be considered sealed based on word of mouth or promises.

* Learn to pitch, and sell yourself convincingly.

* Get your hands dirty. Business goes beyond sitting in the office to do paperwork

* Be kind.

* You do not need accept all investments offered to you.

Listen to these and more in the audio below:

Access to finance is one problem that limits Entrepreneurs across Africa. However, sometimes it’s not about the availability of funding but about being Investor ready (which we discussed in one of our previous episodes).

In this episode, we pick the brains of an exceptional investor, Luni Libes, Founder & Managing Director of fledge.co. Fledge is a global network of conscious company accelerators and seed funds, helping entrepreneurs create impactful companies and co-ops at scale through intense, short programs filled with education, guidance, and a massive amount of mentorship.

Luni details in this episode what Investors look out for while accessing entrepreneurs, one of which is:

* Team

* Impact

* Odds of Success

Listen to our podcast as Luni shares his life, work and experience with us.

Happy New Year Afropreneurs!!!!

Welcome to 2019!!! We are super excited about this new year and we hope you are too. What is so exciting you might ask? GOALS! Our Goals are making us excited.

The beautiful thing about goals is, they give you something to look forward to. This year, we broke down our goals into financial, social, personal and business goals. We didn’t stop there, we summarized them in S.M.A.R.T ways into 7-point Agendas. We went on to create plans and get an accountability partner.

Why does this concern you? Because sometimes you need to hit the ground rolling with a road map and start strong. Your actions can be clear and the impact of your actions can be felt. Remember don’t just write goals for 2019 alone. Write goals that help you reach the future you innately desire – the ultimate goal.

Start the year with a bang and great goals. Listen to the podcast below

P.S: Apply to the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme for funding, training & mentoring- www.tefconnect.com

At a meetup recently, we discussed with a few entrepreneurs and we discovered that a lot of them struggled with knowing which to put first – Quality or Quantity. They struggled with knowing which mattered more and we realized this problem was not unique to them.

With our high population and sometimes high addressable markets, we often feel the need to fulfil the promise of quantity because it yields a higher return when more people buy your products. There is also the concern that quality often costs too much and your target market may not be willing to pay for the quality they so dearly want.

However, people have also been known to ditch goods for higher quality especially if the price difference is not too much. When asked, a lot of people admit to wanting quality over quantity. They believe that quality lasts longer and holds more benefit and prestige.

Does this mean you should lower your standards?

Could this mean quality is not that important?

Does this mean you can ignore the quantity, hike your price and focus on quality?

Should you alternate both?

What exactly should you do?

Listen to our view and the view of others in the podcast below. In addition, tell us the conclusion you came to.

Do you have experiences in relation to this topic to share, please send us an email or share in the comment section. Someone might just learn from it.

Finally, If you want to hear more from The Afropreneur Podcast including and beyond the podcasts, join the newsletter mailing list.

In our last episode, we featured Onyeka Akumah, CEO of Farmcrowdy, Nigeria’s first Digital Agriculture Platform, where he spoke about Being Investor Ready.

This week we are analyzing two amazing concepts and pitching them against each other – being efficient vs. being thorough.

When we googled the meaning of thorough these were what we saw:

complete with regard to every detail.

taking pains to do something carefully and completely.

And when we googled the meaning of efficient, these were the results:

achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense.

working in a well-organized and competent way.

We discovered that there are people who are extremely meticulous and follow processes to the later and there are others who get the job done well and on time. Upon conversing with some entrepreneurs, we found out that while they appreciate their thorough team members, they lose out on other things in the process while the efficient team members get things done on time and fast.

Which then is more important? Should we compromise quality for speed/resources or vice versa? Is it possible to be both?

Find out our thoughts below:

Do you have experiences in relation to this topic to share, please send us an email or share in the comment section. Someone might just learn from it.

If you want to hear more from The Afropreneur Podcast including and beyond the podcasts, join the newsletter mailing list.