The Afropreneur

In our last episode we featured Onyeka Akumah, CEO of Farmcrowdy, Nigeria’s first Digital Agriculture Platform. Onyeka gives us tips on how to and make your startup attract that investment you need.

What do investors look out for?

* Team – the people and history

* Team – competence

* Team – chemistry/blend

* The idea – real, rich & impactful ideas with depth.

* Market – where? How many people?

* Where are you today? What have you done?

Listen to Onyeka explain all the points above

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.

As Entrepreneurs you will need funding for your startup at one time or the other, many get confused about the best source of funding per time.

What are the types of funding that exist?

* Personal savings

* Friends, Family & Fools (FFF)

* Grants

* Angel investors

* Venture Capitalists

* Bank Loans

The entrepreneur we feature in this episode – Onyeka Akumah, CEO of Farmcrowdy, Nigeria’s first Digital Agriculture Platform. Farmcrowdy recently secured a $1m investment from a group of VCs.

In this episode he speaks on how to prepare yourself for investments and make your startup attract that investment you need.

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.

Many startups founders and entrepreneurs are caught between building their personal brands or focusing on the brands of their startups or businesses. While there really isn’t a clear cut position on which brand (personal or company) you should focus on at the different stages of your startup, it is still important to build a personal brand.

What is a personal brand?Your personal brand is how people perceive you. It is a combination of your career, professional experience, network and online presence which eventually defines your reputation online and offline.

Creating a good personal brand requires that you deliberately build people’s trust in you.

Why is it so important?Building your personal branding gives you leverage in the following ways:– It lets people see your expertise and previous experience.– You’ll find it helps you attract business partners, employees, and customers.– People might seek you out for speaking engagements, articles, videos, and more based on your personal branding because it establishes you as the expert.

How to build a strong personal brand?Here are some steps to building a personal brand:– Choose what you want to be known for, choose your voice– Pick the right social channels relevant to the audience you want to reach– Go beyond social media, network and meet people offline– Be consistent in your content/message

In this episode we speak on the benefits of building a strong personal brand and how to go about this.

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.

The World Cup has come and gone, with all the fanfare and drama! France was the standout team for one reason – Teamwork!

As a startup founder / entrepreneur we often struggle with recruiting people into our team for various reasons, however good teamwork is essential in all organisations. It signifies that:

* People are working towards a shared purpose and common goals and

* They are sharing their varied skills in complementary roles and in cooperation with each other

But why is a Team so important? Without the ability to effectively build and work in a team environment, you could delay the success of developing, formulating and implementing new and innovative ideas. This will affect your ability to solve problems, as well as achieve your set targets.

Important points to note when recruiting or building a team:

* Every role is important in the team

* Define each team member’s role

* Recognize  and reward results/efforts

* Hire competent hands

* Learn to delegate

* Soft skills are also important

* Communicate your goals appropriately

* Design an effective onboarding process

Find out more by listening to our conversation below:

Do you think an African team can win the World Cup??? Please send us an email or share in the comment section

If you are an entrepreneur and 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.

Entrepreneurship to many people is an escape from the 9-5 life. It creates a door to “freedom” especially as people feel like they are their own boss. Many quotes and founder stories give the impression that as an entrepreneur you get to call the shots, e.g.

* You can wake up whenever you like

* Choose when you want to go on a vacay

* Decide what days should be public holidays

* Make your own rules

* Make so much money and control that money

* Live above the “9-5 rules”

* and many more

Unfortunately, these are not exactly the realities of entrepreneurship. It takes way more than this to be an entrepreneur. Truth be told, you never stop working for someone. Your business must make money and for that to happen, you need clients, customers or investors. These 3 groups of people become your bosses. They call the shots on a different scale. Your business becomes your new 9-5 (actually 24 hours) if you believe in the idea and passionate about bringing it to fruition.

There are so many things about entrepreneurship that is not as rosy as it is portrayed in the media. To many, being called an entrepreneur is cool because it is “trendy”. There is so much more that happens behind the scenes to yield the glam you ended up with. It is almost like being a celebrity. To many, it looks glam but the BTS (Behind the scenes) are far from glamorous. It takes grit and mindless courage to attain the glam!

A few entrepreneurs were kind enough to share their discoveries with us – Things they were never told but they experienced in their entrepreneurship journey.

Listen to our entrepreneurship conversation below:

Disclaimer: We are not trying to discourage you from being an entrepreneur, we are just preparing you for the work ahead. Many times, we wish someone was a kind enough to tell us these things. We are being that kind someone and we hope it prepares you to tackle those challenges and turn them into opportunities. Most importantly, we hope it eases your entrepreneurship journey. Listen and share your thoughts with us.

If you are an entrepreneur and 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.

Who likes to fail? Surely no one I know.

Besides, failure is an integral part of our journey as entrepreneurs, why then do we run away from it (I am not saying we should aim to fail)? We believe there is a lot we can learn from failures, ours and other people’s failures.

We had a chat with Chude Jideonwo, and he shared his success and failure stories.

Chude Jideonwo is a Nigerian lawyer, journalist and media entrepreneur. Working several years in Media, Advertising and Public Relations, he has become the go-to media entrepreneur and influencer in Nigeria.He is a co-founder of The Future Project, which is focused on inspiring leadership, building entrepreneurs, and innovative use of the media tool for sustained social change.

If you stop, you stand 0% chance of succeeding! – Chude Jideonwo

You can also contribute and ask questions, we will definitely reply and even share in our next podcast.

Did you enjoyed this Episode?

Please leave a comment below and share with your friends.If you want to hear more from The Afropreneur Podcast including and beyond the podcasts, join the enewsletter mailing list.

Keep spreading the JOY

Happy New Year!!!!

We are super excited to bring you our first podcast for the year.

The year always begins with a ton of people making promises, goals and resolutions on how they intend the new year to be. However, statistics show that over 70% do not follow through.

No matter how busy you are as an entrepreneur, it’s important to still take the time to reflect on what you can do better in your work and life. This sets the tone for successes and even the failures that you will encounter all year long.

Listen to us discuss what we think about setting Goals or Resolutions at the beginning of the year.

You can also contribute and ask questions, we will definitely reply and even share in our next podcast.

Did you enjoyed this Episode?

Please leave a comment below and share with your friends.If you want to hear more from The Afropreneur Podcast including and beyond the podcasts, join the enewsletter mailing list.

50 episodes!!! Wow!

Thank you for joining in this journey of learning, we have lots more in store you and will be unveiling our plans as they mature.

What makes the best companies standout? Is it their brand colours, logo, product, services, staff? What makes a product or service great? How did great brands get loyal customers?

How then can you be buzz worthy?

You can do this by having a Unique Selling Point. Show the customers why they must choose you over others, this is what gives you a competitive advantage compared to your competitors. You can increase your competitive advantage through:

* Patents

* Contracts/subscriptions

* Speed of service delivery

* Easy of use

* Cheaper (not cheap)

* Better

* Niche

* Human

In our podcast today, Tunde Phoster speaks on how a business can become buzzworthy and the steps to take to make your startup stand out:

Listen to our conversation below:

Don’t be regular, Be Different” – Tunde Phoster”

If You Enjoyed the Show

Please leave a comment below. If you want to hear more from The Afropreneur Podcast including and beyond the podcasts, join the enewsletter mailing list.

– Startup Grind Lagos is hosting Nigeria’s former ICT Minister and Venture Capitalist with TLcom, Dr. Omobola Johnson, at her meetup on the 25th of November. Get ticket info here 

– Do you think your startup/idea is innovative enough? Apply for the Startup of the Year Award which is an international innovative competition created by Bonjour idée with the support of 70 partners (major business groups incubators, chambers of commerce, media, competitiveness clusters, influential blogs). – Apply here 

Sharing is Caring 🙂

What exactly is ‘Outsourcing’? and why should businesses even consider it?

Outsourcing is the practice of having certain job functions done outside a company instead of having an in-house department or employee handle them; functions can be outsourced to either a company or an individual.

Businesses outsource for a number of reasons including

* Reducing and controlling operating costs

* Improving company focus

* Gaining access to world-class capabilities

* Freeing internal resources for other purposes

* Streamlining or increasing efficiency for time-consuming functions

* Sharing risks with a partner company

However, it is important that you analyze your business and make a business case for outsourcing any function of your business. You do not just outsource for the sake of outsourcing – The goal should be to get better outcomes for the business and customers while using the resources available to you.

Before you outsource to any individual of company, you have to ensure that you have carried out an appropriate background check on them, have your deliverables well detailed out and a contract that binds them to it.

In this episode, we try to find out if outsourcing should be considered by small businesses.

Listen to our conversation below:

If You Enjoyed the Show

Please leave a comment below. If you want to hear more from The Afropreneur Podcast including and beyond the podcasts, join the enewsletter mailing list.

– Do you think your startup/idea is innovative enough? Apply for the Startup of the Year Award which is an international innovative competition created by Bonjour idée with the support of 70 partners (major business groups incubators, chambers of commerce, media, competitiveness clusters, influential blogs). – Apply here 

Sharing is Caring 🙂

Do what you do best, outsource the rest Peter Drucker

While preparing the podcast for this week we came across a recording from one of our Startup Grind Lagos meetups and thought it wise to share with you all.

Business, as we all know, isn’t the easiest to succeed in especially if you take the socio-economic challenges entrepreneurs face in Africa into consideration. However, there are people that are thriving despite all the challenges, which is one of our motivations to bring The Afropreneur Podcast to you.

The Entrepreneurs succeeding aren’t succeeding by luck, they had to put in the research and hard work. Putting it in perspective, it is even harder to stay successful.

One core attributes of these entrepreneurs is that they are strategic in decisions they make.

What makes an entrepreneur strategic? How can we be strategic in our thinking?

In this episode, Jonah Ulebor takes us through how best to be strategic as an entrepreneur.

Listen to our conversation below:

 

Strategic Entrepreneurs always win – Jonah Ulebor

If You Enjoyed the Show

Please leave a comment below. If you want to hear more from The Afropreneur Podcast including and beyond the podcasts, join the enewsletter mailing list.

In case you missed it, our last episode was on Lessons from the TEF Forum. Click to catch up on the interesting discussion, you will definitely love it.

– If you are in Lagos, do not miss Startup Grind‘s meetup with Afua Osei (Co-founder, She Leads Africa) on October 28th. Purchase your ticket here

– Are you an entrepreneur, an innovator, or creative? Apply to join 700+ global entrepreneurs for the world’s largest digital accelerator program

– Do you think your startup/idea is innovative enough? Apply for the Startup of the Year Award which is an international innovative competition created by Bonjour idée with the support of 70 partners (major business groups incubators, chambers of commerce, media, competitiveness clusters, influential blogs). – Apply here 

– Apply for the SXSW Accelerator Live Pitch event, get to meet industry experts and VCs.

Sharing is Caring 🙂