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05/10/2021

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25/07/2021

Insightful...

: Looking ahead
What problem are you really trying to solve?

It matters in African culture to provide a decent and dignified burial for one’s loved ones. We all know that. Poor people have always been anxious about plunging their families into poverty because of funeral-related expenses.

I actually remember the day I first began to discuss it with one of my colleagues. I began to study how the poor have created something called “Burial Societies” that are really a form of micro-insurance scheme. Looking at that model, I decided to Re-Imagine these schemes in the mobile digital world. This is how we came to create EcoSure about 15 years ago.

Millions of people are now insured through our digital platform which provides support to families with funeral costs and expenses. People can even buy Life Policies and other insurance.

Let’s examine this using our toolkit:

1. As an entrepreneur, I saw a but didn’t just say useless things about it. I sprung to action to find a solution for a human need that causes great stress and financial difficulty for many families.

2. We looked to . It took at least a year long to develop this platform, and at least three years to scale it!

3. I put some of our best to work on it.

Today is a Product used by more than 4m people. It also provides insurance cover for more than 10m people. As a business, it generates millions every year for our group and is now available in four countries: South Africa, Zimbabwe, Burundi, and Lesotho.

is the greatest source of wealth creation the world has ever known.

“If you want to be successful as an entrepreneur, identify a human need, and reach out to solve it, in a sustainable way, that is not illegal, does not harm others, and your environment.” ~Strive Masiyiwa

There is nothing stopping you from taking the Pathway I have just shown you. Not every problem out there requires a political solution. Some problems have solutions that are staring us in the face. They are just looking for an entrepreneur.

!

Image credit: Photographer unknown.

22/07/2021

Yet another Insightful one...

Introducing the
__"Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision". Peter Drucker

Over the years I have spoken to you about the and the entrepreneur. But a week ago, when Richard Branson went into space on his venture Virgin Galactic, I started to talk about the entrepreneur. These are the guys who don’t just play the game [of entrepreneurship] very well, but they have the ability to change the game completely!

Most entrepreneurs spend their lives simply trying to join and beat the pack in their industry. You hear them they say things like: “I want to be the best hotel” or “I want to be the best mobile network” or “I want to be the best palm oil producer”… But entrepreneurs in the MasterClass, they want to rip up the whole game and play by a different set of rules.

When I saw that rocket plan, I knew that the game of aviation and its related hospitality services had just been uprooted!

# What is “space tourism”?

# How many people will go up there?

We don’t know! What I do know is that it will start out expensive, but the cost will become more accessible over time, just like commercial air travel has over time [in many places, not everywhere]. And it will create a lot of other opportunities and jobs along the way.

I remember when I would tell people that one day they will all one use mobile phones, or that they would use Mobile Money. Most people back then did not how much consumers would love all the products and services made possible by these innovations! Did you?

To become MasterClass, there are no shortcuts; you must master the basics of Junior Class, followed by Senior Class; then comes MasterClass!

How will you know when you have done it?

MasterClass is not like MasterChef where you win a competition. You must be able to build a multi-billion dollar business from scratch! Most great businesses out there began with a MasterClass entrepreneur.

The MasterClass entrepreneur is not only someone who has the visionary ideas to start something, or even the ability to scale through 3Ps. There is something else you must have which is rarely ever mentioned, but which everyone knows is the decisive quality: !

Richard Branson knew that if anything had gone wrong, he would have lost his life, his legacy, and so much more. Some would have said to him: “Richard, you are over 70 years old; you have kids and grandkids. You have nothing to prove anymore.”

!

If you are a person who is afraid to fail, or you are always worried about what others might think if you fail, this is really, really not for you. Just know there is a !

That Virgin Galactic Unity22 spaceflight which lasted about an hour was 17+ years in the making. Those of you who have listened to Business Wars now know that this is the type of dedication it took to build some of the greatest companies. As an entrepreneur myself, I only shudder to think about what it really took.

Tomorrow [Tuesday 20 July], Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, will also go up into space on his own rocketship called Blue Origin. There is another Business War brewing which includes Elon Musk and several others you have not even heard of.

On the historic flight tomorrow, sitting with Bezos and his brother will be an 82-year-old aviator who's spent six decades of her life trying to reach space! She never gave up on her dream!

Are you asking yourself: Why Space? [Believe me, I have heard a lot of people ask that question lately!]

There is no limit to the wealth that is up there! Don’t get caught up in the media hype that space is just “billionaire vs billionaire”… Even the JuniorClass should be able to see the flaws in that simplistic analysis.

I think you all know by now that Jeff Bezos' first job, at age 16, was serving as a cook at McDonald's, frying eggs and burgers back in the kitchen! It was there under the famous "golden arches" as a teenager that Bezos said he first learned about the importance of customer service. He may be a billionaire now but look where he started!

Every lion was once a... yes, you know the answer.

What about you? What are you learning right where you are that you can apply to your entrepreneurial journey ahead?

Is the sky the limit anymore? Was it ever?

End.

Image credit: Dan Galati . Serengeti, Tanzania.

02/11/2016

The Buffalo Hunter

Link:https://www.facebook.com/strivemasiyiwa/posts/1042021479205680:0

The Buffalo Hunter

There is a story told about a professional hunter who had a friend who always wanted to go with him on one of his hunts. So one day he said to his friend, "I have a permit to go into the Zambezi Valley and hunt for a buffalo. Would you like to come with me?"

The friend was ecstatic at the opportunity.

"When do we go?" he asked.

"In about six months time, but before then I have to train you about hunting."

For the next six months, the two men met every day, and they discussed and planned for the trip. The hunter's friend was surprised by how meticulous the hunter was about everything.

He taught him about the bush, and how to survive in it. He taught him everything about buffaloes.

“You must respect the buffalo,” he said, “because it's a very intelligent animal, and it is also extremely dangerous."

He gave him lots of books to read, about hunting and buffaloes.

During that time, the friend also trained every day at the shooting range. He understood by then the different types of guns used to hunt buffalo. He also had to do fitness training, which surprised him.

"You can die out there if you are not fit," his friend explained.

He was totally astounded by what he was learning about hunting.

"Until now, I thought all you do is just go out and shoot, but now I know there’s more to this than meets the eye!" he exclaimed.

When the day came, the two men set out into the wild bush of the Zambezi Valley, one of the most beautiful places on the earth. It is also inhospitably hot, and the terrain is tough.

They'd been tracking one single animal for 5 days, and the hunter's friend was totally exhausted. He watched as his friend patiently made meticulous plans every single day. The hunter seamed to take forever, from the point of view of his friend. Sometimes they would walk, and sometimes they would sit for hours. The hunter was always looking around, scanning the bushes, not even (it appeared) always paying attention to the surrounding areas more than the buffalo.

"Why can't he just shoot and we go home!?"

He was getting tired of this, as they walked almost 50 miles a day. He was also hungry most of the time, as they only ate rations of dried meat and fruit, most of the time. The hunter looked at the animal through his gun sight over and over every day, but wouldn’t take a shot. Sometimes they appeared so close, but he still did not do anything.

It was the fifth day: The animal was in sight again, but the hunter was going through his routine again. The friend sat in the bushes, when suddenly a rabbit appeared in front of him and he thought to himself, "At least if I shoot this rabbit, we can have meat tonight. I'm tired of dry rations." So he pulled out his gun and fired once. The rabbit disappeared, as he had missed anyway, but so did the buffalo, and with it, the entire herd.

The hunter looked at him in total horror and disbelief!

Then he shouted, "Run, or you die!" as he took off.

They almost got stampeded by an entire herd that seemed to appear from nowhere. Also, suddenly there were lions everywhere that he had not seen before! But for the skills of the hunter, who led them both to safety, they could have died.

The buffalo was gone. The hunt was over.

They had to return home, empty-handed.

There are at least 5 business lessons I want you to extract from this story.

Your turn: List 5x simple (one line) responses, if you are interested. No essays.

[By the way, I don't approve of hunting. So remember, this is a business story. Don't write me stories about animals!]

End.

02/11/2016

Turn your business into a technology company (Part 7)

Link:https://www.facebook.com/strivemasiyiwa/posts/1032976403443521:0

Turn your business into a technology company (Part 7)

__Maybe it was "esusu," "stokvel," and "mukando" that got me into business after all!

In my last post I talked about a traditional savings scheme practiced across Africa. It’s easily the largest savings bank on the African continent, holding billions of dollars with operations in every single country in Africa (each one with its own brand name), and a branch network that goes right down to the village level! Well, it's more than a single bank, it is more of a system.

I talked in my post about how technology could be applied to this amazing informal system to make it more efficient, modern and secure. I imagined that African entrepreneurs (including myself) will soon create a multibillion dollar industry around it. The mobile phone and the Internet are the key tools to making this happen.

Which reminds me, did I tell you that this is really how I raised my first capital to go into business?

When I returned to my home country Zimbabwe, soon after its independence, I got a job with the state-owned telephone company as an engineer. In those days there were no mobile telephone companies. Almost every day after work, I used to stop at a local hotel for drinks with some of my mates before catching the bus to go home. I did not own a car in those days, and I used the public bus system to get to and from work.

My friends and I would often discuss different business ideas which could help us generate more cash for ourselves. I personally wanted to save up to buy or build a house one day, and get married. I soon realised that these discussions always ended up as nothing more than just talk, so I determined to put some form and structure to it:

__"Why don't we start a savings club in which we all pledge to set aside a portion of our salaries?" I suggested to more than 10 people gathered around the bar.

"What will we do with the money?" someone asked.

"Well, we can develop projects in which we invest?" I suggested.

"Like what?!" someone else chimed.

"We can start a disco. The one here is lousy!"

Almost everybody thought it was a good idea, and I was chosen as the coordinator. I also suggested that next time we meet at a more serious venue, rather than a pub. I suggested the home of an uncle of mine, and we set a date for that weekend. On the Saturday morning set for the meeting, only three of my friends pitched up! I suggested we start anyway, and we agreed to each set aside every month what would have been the equivalent of $75.

I went off and opened the bank account, and told all the would-be members of our little “mukando”… adashe, ajo, chama, chilimba, chit, ekub, estibe, esusu, hagbad, likilimba, kixikila, maround, motshelo, njangi, upatu, stokvel, vicoba were just a few of the savings schemes that you shared here last week… (sometimes spelled in a few different ways, but I’ve done my best).

At the end of the month, only two of us actually put in any money. Two others who promised to put in money continued to attend meetings for a month or two, but then we kicked them out after it became obvious they were never going to put in any money.

__Once I put in the first $75, I became a very serious individual. I never entered a pub again... The rest is history, as they say!

Here are some things to take away:

# I really started with $75, as a member of a failed savings scheme of young professionals.

# It's great to get together with your friends to start a business, but don't allow it to just become pub talk. Put some action plans together.

# Once you start putting money aside, things begin to happen.

# When people must put their money into an account, you’ll soon see who’s committed and who is not.

# Don't be discouraged if others aren’t willing to commit; just proceed with those who will... even if it’s just you!

# Even if you haven’t yet decided what you’re going to do, start saving, even if it’s very little. It's not reasonable to imagine you’ll be able to borrow money, and start a business, without putting in anything yourself, however small.

Today, you can raise money for small ventures on the Internet using much more sophisticated schemes such as "crowding sourcing." My daughter and her friends used a similar scheme when they were at university to raise money for a social venture. Whilst you must exercise caution when participating in such schemes (as many are scams) you must still have the intellectual curiosity to study them carefully, and understand how they work.

(Please don't inundate me with requests for information on this one, because I'm a little too old to get into it. Those of you who are determined will no doubt figure it all out). Here’s one place to get started in your research about what’s out there: http://crowdfundbeat.com/2015/04/05/2015-list-of-crowdfunding-websites/

One more thing -- I never condemned anyone who didn’t join me. I found ways to keep the relationships with them. Some of my friends who participated in those first meetings also went on to establish themselves as entrepreneurs, and often speak of how they had been inspired by my commitment in those early days.

End.

02/11/2016

Turn your business into a technology company (Part 6)

Link:https://www.facebook.com/strivemasiyiwa/posts/1028568617217633:0

Turn your business into a technology company (Part 6)

__Applying technology to an old, old idea!

In some parts of West Africa, they call it "susu." In South Africa they call it a "stokvel." In Zimbabwe they call it "mukando.”

__A group of people who know and trust each other get together and they form a savings club. They agree to save a certain amount of money every month and each one of them takes turns to receive a large amount of money. It’s a traditional savings and loan idea that’s been around for a very, very long time.

Women in informal markets, in villages, in church groups, do it. Low income workers do it, right across Africa.

People who have tried to estimate how much money circulates in these informal savings schemes believe it’s probably billions of dollars across Africa.

About three years ago, I brought together a small team of smart "coders" and asked them to design a mobile "App" to "re-imagine" this system. The team developed a platform which enabled a group of people to use their "mobile money" service to save their money using this platform, using their phone number as a bank account. We’ve now successfully implemented this idea, and thousands of Savings Clubs are now using it.

The "EcoCash Mukando" platform does not try to do away with this traditional system, but has simply applied technology to make it more efficient and flexible:

# it holds the deposits on behalf of the savings clubs, and what are known as "burial societies."

# they can earn interest on their money, which they could not do before.

# it's easier and safer to deposit and move their money.

Since the service was launched in Zimbabwe a few months ago, I have been amazed at how many clubs exist, as each week hundreds of new clubs are joining, and being formed.

Now that we have got the concept working, and generating revenue, our next task is to begin to roll it out in other countries.

A few weeks ago I was having a meeting with a leading international banker in New York, when he suddenly said to me, “Tell me about this banking system your people in Zimbabwe have pioneered. You call it Mukando; what an amazing idea. You guys could mobilize billions in savings!"

I simply smiled, and thought to myself, "Here is a guy in New York, watching something we are doing in Africa."

I have no doubt in my mind that this is a billion dollar idea.

I have used this example to illustrate a very important point to you:

Some of the greatest opportunities out there do not necessarily involve new inventions or innovations. You can start by observing things around you, some of them basic mundane things. Some of these things are taken for granted, as "the way things are done," but everything that you can see with your physical eyes, is "subject to change."

Why can't you be the person who brings this change by applying a technological innovation to it...

Here’s my challenge: Think about the most mundane activity around you, and "re-imagine it" for the DIGITAL AGE. If you succeed, you'll be on your way to becoming a billionaire.

One last point: many people tell me they have lots of ideas, but the mobile operators in their country are not willing to partner with them. As much as I'm in this business, let me tell you something: you don't need them!

Uber, WhatsApp, Twitter, Viber, WeChat, Instagram, Alibaba… none of them went begging mobile operators to partner with them. They just did it.

Come up with strategies that bypass the need to get anyone's approval or permission, including mine!

You could be the one who changes the world with an idea all others thought impossible. Don’t get left behind.

To be continued. . .

02/11/2016

Turn your business into a technology company (Part 5)

link:https://www.facebook.com/strivemasiyiwa/posts/1023328621074966:0

Turn your business into a technology company (Part 5)
__Use mobile phones and the Internet to change your business.

Most of the fastest growing businesses in the world are businesses that have "re-imagined" well established business areas by introducing innovations based on the Internet and mobile phone technologies. You don’t have to change the business you’re in to make it a "technology company." You just have to "re-imagine" it using the Internet and the mobile phone.

Let's look at some examples:

# From 'flea markets' to eCommerce: Africa is full of what we commonly call "flea markets" (informal markets). These are small little businesses selling almost anything that we find in every African city. Some are huge -- Mbare Market in Harare, Ikeja Market in Lagos, Kibera in Kenya, to name some of the best known. There you can buy almost anything!

In China some smart young entrepreneurs looked at these informal markets, and re-imagined them on the Internet.

__Out of this came some of the most valuable businesses in the world today… companies like Alibaba and Tencent!

# We all know about companies like Uber and Lyft, and their Chinese counterparts. All these guys did was use mobile technology, and the emergence of smartphones, to bring efficiency to something as old as cars -- hailing down a taxi!

# A young entrepreneur in America, who loved reading books, wanted to find a way to get a book. Instead of spending his time going to bookshops and libraries, he thought: “Why not sell books using the Internet?” The company he created is one of the most formidable businesses in the world today. It’s called Amazon.

# A group of entrepreneurs used to sell videos, something we see on the streets of Africa every day. These guys thought to themselves: “Why can't we do this Online?” First, they started selling on a website, then they thought why sell videos? We can just stream the videos direct! That is Netflix, folks!

# Years ago if you wanted to sell something like your car, you went to the newspaper and bought a column in a "classifieds" column. It was time-consuming and costly. Today there are thousands of businesses that do this Online.

Some of the greatest opportunities today lie in simply taking things we have always done, and applying innovations based on the Internet and mobile phones.

Today I want you to think about the business you're in, or work for, and ask yourself:

__What have we done to make this a technology business? How much of our income comes from our use of the Internet and mobile phones?

If it’s less than 25%, you’re headed for extinction… and you probably deserve it! If you don't get your business Online and using mobile technology, someone will "re-imagine" what you do, and take it away from you.

# You have to drive your business through the Internet and Mobile phone technology. There’s no business which is exempt. You saw the article I published recently called "Digital Farmer." Yes, even smallholder farmers in villages must use mobile phones and the Internet to grow their businesses.

Here’s an interesting prediction: within 10 years there should be no markets found anywhere in Africa, like Siyo So, Mbare, Ikeja, and Kibera. You shouldn’t find anywhere in Africa someone selling wares at a street corner, even vegetables. It will all have gone Online, and ordered using a mobile phone. Now let's get to work!

To be continued. . .

Image Caption: A farmer uses mobile phone technology to compare prices at various markets within, Burkina Faso, West Africa.