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40 Points From Pastor Poju Oyemede’s Instagram Live On Entrepreneurship With Leke Alder

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Pastor Poju is one man that is making the stay at home easy for many people especially Nigerians. His Instalive has been insightful.

On Wednesday, April 8th, 2020, he featured Leke Alder and below is the excerpts from the Instalive session:

  1. Discipline, logical reasoning and market insight are three success factors for entrepreneurs.
  2. To develop an idea, you can employ Synthetic Creativity or Intuitive Creativity.
  3. Synthetic Creativity asks how you can do something better and faster. It looks at existing conditions and finds ways to improve them. It adds value.
  4. Intuitive Creativity is the ability to cross-reference information. You read Science, Architecture, Fiction etc. and then draw insights from the different sources. You essentially deploy data to create new ideas and products. It’s harder than Synthetic Creativity.
  5. Where data is absent, you generate your own data. When you generate your own data, you create another business opportunity as there are always people willing to buy data.
  6. Be careful about defining your market share. The population size of a country is not the same as market share. Your market share is the people willing and able to buy your products and services.
  7. Distinguish between an idea and the idea of an idea. An idea of an idea is a thought about how something could be, for instance an app that can make you flip and jump.
  8. You need to work out the modalities of the idea – what will make it fail, its production cost, willingness of the market to buy it, etc. Do your research and bring your idea to a point of refinement, where you can present it to the market.
  9. Solomon said, “Buy wisdom.” Wisdom isn’t cheap. The average bank in Nigeria has at least 25 consultants working on the company. Why? One insight can change the trajectory of an organisation.
  10. Consultants may be expensive but thinking and ideas matter to an entrepreneur. You need to develop the capacity to think.
  11. The most powerful movie that has shaped and stimulated my ideas about business is Wall Street, starring Charlie Sheen. The famous quote, “Money never sleeps” is from this movie.
  12. Entrepreneurs are not opportunists; they are opportunity tourists. They always look for opportunities to make money. Your job in every situation, is to look for how to make money.
  13. Entrepreneurs ought to restrategise their business to function within the reality of COVID-19. The first thing would be to find ways to mitigate the effects of the Coronavirus on the business.
  14. Some of the effects of COVID-19 are policy changes, foreign exchange issues, people holding on to cash thus limiting cash flow. Consumer behaviour will also change.
  15. Think about the relevance of your business to your clients, the value that your product gives to them. Then ask yourself, “How can I make money out of this?”
  16. Your business is only as good as your team. Your first job is to put together a sound team that is intelligent, loyal and ethical.
  17. Share your vision with your team. Communicate the dream. Inspire your team through personal example.
  18. In business, you don’t operate for now alone, you take a long term view.
  19. If your business is not sound or solid and you diversify too early, you’re going to destroy what you have. You can’t diversify without consolidating. Diversification needs a solid structure – Admin, HR, Strategy, etc.
  20. On the effect of COVID-19 lockdown and salaries, communication with staff is required. Explain how a pay cut may be necessary to enable everyone to keep their job. As the head of the organisation, lead by example in this regard.
  21. Run a humanitarian system. Care for your staff genuinely. Provide health benefits, do hospital visits, where necessary etc. Develop a family structure in your business, so that everyone understands that a lay off is the extremity in any situation.
  22. If you have to lay off staff do it in a humane manner.
  23. Right now, entrepreneurs should think in terms of innovation and creativity. How do you leverage technology and telecommunications? How do you bring your team together? How do you keep on working at this time?
  24. What products can you develop? How do you change the thrust of your organisation to be relevant now? Have a strategy session with your team to talk through these things.
  25. You don’t grow a company by just cutting costs. You grow a company by managing costs and growing revenue.
  26. Industries in the non-essential space need to mitigate the effects of COVID-19. They must study the environment and recognise that cash flow will be constricted. So, they must ask what the market needs right now.
  27. Industries in the non-essential space need to transform their products into needs, because needs are selling now, not wants.
  28. In these times, religious institutions should be selling what the corporations typically sell – utilitarian value, while Corporations must sell what the religious institutions sell – hope. There’s a switch. It’s called the Scissors Effect.
  29. Corporations need to push hope, optimism, trust and solidity, by assuring their clients that their businesses are going concerns and here to stay. Religious institutions need to equip their congregation with the tools to survive – food, business classes etc.
  30. Imagine that this crisis may be here for a while and reconfigure your business accordingly.
  31. You remain relevant at this period by helping your clients. Where can you be relevant along the corporate value chain?
  32. An entrepreneur converts emotions into intelligence. You have to be rational. Stop complaining. You’re not a victim, you’re an entrepreneur!
  33. Discouragement may come but you need to think about how to generate cashflow and what you can offer at different price points. Don’t go for very high price points, because people are watching their cash flow right now.
  34. Go for low or affordable price points because you need cash flow in business. In business, if your cash flow is dead, you’re dead.
  35. Partnership should be based on contributory capacity. It should not be sentimental. Draw up a partnership agreement. Agree on basic covenants – the things that will never take place.
  36. If you don’t trust someone, don’t go into a partnership with the person. Have an adjudicatory process where the parties have an impartial individual that serves as a mentor.
  37. You can bring your children into a business, as long as they are competent. If not, let them learn & grow through the ranks. Expose them to business principles so they understand the history, ethos, vision and character of the company.
  38. If your children work in your business, they should earn respect, because of their competence and intelligence, not because they are children of the boss.
  39. Get rid of any cultural baggage that makes no sense within the context of a commercial transaction.
  40. Humility is key. Be mindful of envy.

© Leke Alder

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