THIS IS NOT AN OPEN RELATIONSHIP; IT'S A MARRIAGE– YOUR BUSINESS STRATEGY

I was recently in Ghana for a beloved brother’s wedding and I must say it was good to be home. Second to my excitement about my brother getting married was the way in which Ghana had changed economically for the better but more on that later.

I got back to be welcomed by the ever tempting red SALE signs everywhere (and I definitely over indulged myself because I can tell my bank account is feeling the pinch); it got me thinking how many of these businesses are actually in the right financial and strategic position to have a SALE. Are they doing it because every store is doing it and they all seem to be making money? OR are they doing it because it is an integral part of their business model to have a seasonal sale during the year? I mean I look at Paserelle and I know my business cannot handle any form of sale and it need not because of what I am offering.

For a successful business, you have to be faithful to your core strategy. It is never advisable to keep your strategy open to change as if you were in an Open Relationship.

This idea brings me to my topic of the day, which has to do with your business strategy. When I started Paserelle, I had one vision in mind; to produce and market African inspired clothing that the fashionable 20 something woman can wear no matter what continent they found themselves on. It was a clear vision, I knew WHAT I was producing – (African Inspired Clothing) WHO I was producing for – (young and fashionable 20 something women) and WHY they will value what I was offering – (it was unique, it allowed them to celebrate the rich African continent and it made a statement). This was the premise on which I started my business and I am glad to say it is still the same as I write this article.

It hasn’t been easy staying true to the strategy I have described above but it has been instrumental in me continuing to stay in business and feel relevant. There is a lot of temptation when you begin a start up which tries to get you to deviate from your core strategy. It happens in the same way the SALE sign tempts you away from saving for that dream car you want or the deposit for the new house or whatever important and necessary expense that you are planning for; it tempts you rather to buy those shoes, or bag or outfit that you had no intention of purchasing but you only did so because it said 50 percent off.

When i think about my strategy, i see this. It touches on every aspect of my business model and it holds it together. When it fails, i fail.

As start-ups, the temptation is not to spend but rather to deviate from what made us special in the first place. I recently had such a temptation; where a client wanted to send their own fabric to me so that I could replicate one of my designs for them. To a start-up this is still a sale and it represents much needed revenue and many will jump at the opportunity and indeed I almost jumped. But I thought to myself, what is wrong with this picture? It went against everything my brand had come to stand for ‘Contemporary Fashion seeded in Africa’. First of all the fabric was not sourced from anywhere in Africa and secondly it was not influenced by me. This is only one client, but soon there will be another and then another and eventually, my business will lose its identity. You will keep on switching from one presumably good strategy to the next the same way some people chase boyfriends or girlfriends without ever finding the right one because the perfect one was three or four boy/girlfriends ago.

Having a clear business strategy is not an option you tick on a successful business check list. Any one who wants to succeed in business has to have one. And once you know what your strategy is, do not separate from it or worse still, DIVORCE it unless it is a decisive decision to do so.

The author Margaret Heffernan perhaps puts it in the best way I can think of; a business without a defined strategy is one that is like a company among the ‘walking dead’. Halloween is not for another few months, do not turn your business into a Zombie.

As for me, my new collection is almost done so I am in a frenzy making sure that what I am presenting does not deviate from my core strategy. Wish me luck!!

This is my Truth!!

BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE

I happened to stumble on an article today about Benjamin Franklin. So captivating was the piece that it has caused me to change focus on what I wanted to write about today. Indeed, I have no idea how this piece is going to end but it may have no bearing on business start ups but a lot to do with life in general.

After reading, I found myself contemplating the qualities of the many world leaders that have gone before us and what made them such good leaders. Most importantly, could we draw on some of the lessons they preached about to enhance our modern day hustle. During my research I found the ideologies of Benjamin Franklin, perhaps, the most compelling. Most things he said and did, while not directly pertaining to business, forms a fundamental recipe of any successful endeavour and running your own business is no different.

The more I read about Benjamin Franklin, the more I came to understand that as people, we are not just one thing; we continually evolve to become different things in our lifetime and we should give ourselves the chance to be that change. Benjamin Franklin was a man of many things. He was different things to different people. To some he was a printer and for a while to the readers of 1700 Boston, he was a widowed writer addressing some of the issues of women and his multifaceted personality didn’t stop there. He was an entrepreneur, an inspirational leader, a husband, a father and the list goes on. It is apparent this was a man who was not afraid of change or being known as something different to different people.

As I pondered over the life of Franklin, I took a look around me and indeed at myself and realised how steadfast some of us are to hold on to one single identity. Take a look at your identity card or perhaps at the application form you just completed and look at the career section. What do we find? I’m an Investment Banker, I’m an accountant, I’m a Lawyer, financial Analyst, doctor, engineer, administrator and we keep churning the titles from one status to the other. We even go as far as pay to have these titles conferred on us. As great as these titles are, they become our limit when we allow them to define who we truly are. We loose ourselves and in turn, take on the identity of this vague title. Indeed, we would be lost without these titles; we will start to question – WHO AM I?

I guess today’s piece is really about getting us to look beyond the forced identity we have bought for ourselves and to think of the possibility that we can be more than one person. We can be better than we are and by doing so who knows the joy we will unleash into our own lives and to those of others. For instance, if I look at myself; to the professor who graded my dissertation - I am an academic; at work I’m a Banker/Financial analyst  and a lot of people see me as either one of these but for my clients at Paserelle, I am a small business entrepreneur trying to bring a concept to life. Neither one of these titles sounds very sexy, but I resolve to take on each one of these identities when the need arises and each day I look for new ones because as people we evolve and I choose to allow that evolution and not be afraid of it.

We don’t have to settle in life for half of something. Sometimes and indeed most times it is possible to get all that we want out of life. We don’t get the things we want out of life by using our titles, if anything, that limits us. We get what we want by going after them. And Benjamin Franklin gives some of the most forward thinking action-inducing lessons to get what we truly want out of life.

Unsurprisingly, the first lesson is centred on talking with no associated action.  We all know someone or at some point have been that person who talks about their plans to do this and that and that is all it ever is, talks and plans that never materialises into real action. Talk, my friend, is so cheap you could literally buy it from Pound-land or the 99p store. You keep talking so much without any action and soon you lose credibility. Remember, ‘well-done will always be better than well-said’.

Secondly, don’t procrastinate. I personally call procrastination a glorified word for laziness. Sit down today and get your life’s objectives written down and then start going after them now. Not tomorrow, not in the next hour or when you land that new job- you have to go after them now!! ‘Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today’

There are so many more lessons I could imbibe in you today but I choose to leave you with this one. Don’t Fight Change. The day you wake up and you think to yourself, there is not much else for me to do or aim for or adapt to, that is the day you know you are finished. Rather than shying away from change, we should thrive on it because, guess what? It is inevitable, it will happen. As a child you will learn to walk, you will start talking, then you run and soon you grow taller and eventually the greys arrive and old age sets in and we die (Yes that is also change) – WE CHANGE so give up the fight against change and join in it and figure out a way to make change work for you.

In all this, we should remember that we are human and therefore highly fallible. We should give ourselves permission to make mistakes because that takes the pressure off and we save time because once mistakes happen, we accept it as a necessary part of getting to where we want to go. We spend less time moping, accept and assess the mistake for what it truly is, pick the lessons we need from it and quickly move on.

A person, who never makes a mistake, is one who has never taken any risks, one who always shades within the dotted lines and never took a chance on something truly EXCEPTIONAL. I never met any man who was great beyond belief who had not made mistakes. Have you?

For me, I am going forth now, making sure I get the most out of life. My journey started a minute ago.

This is my Truth.

EXECUTION – I AM BETTER THAN YOU

 

I remember quite fondly the day I woke up and thought I had stumbled on this goldmine idea of turning a beloved hobby into a budding business. It was in 2006 and I was in the second year of University. Up until that point, I had been dabbing my feet into the uber cool afro-centric contemporary fashion and I was loving every minute of it. I would show up at Global Village in Cardiff University clothed in the finest Kente or a golden Woodin ensemble complete with the head gear. Or I would enter a restaurant decked in nothing but a funky African print bustier top, a pair of jeans and killer signature stilettos. It came as no surprise to me when I envisioned a world in a few years where people from the rich continent were proud to embrace their colours and the pace setters of the western world will sit up and take notes.

In my naïve state, I thought, surely, I am the only one to have come to this ingenious realisation. At the time, ASOS was one of my favourite, if not my favourite retailers and it was growing. I identified this African niche and rolled out the emails. As I write this, I am quite chuffed and peeved with myself, that at the time I actually had some email conversations with the retail giant about the possibility of having an ASOS Africa which would complement their existing operation. My folly, YES FOLLY, was that I was not prepared. I had the GOOD IDEA (previous post-06/06/2012) but it was not fundable because of a fundamental problem. I had a vision with no medium of execution.

 Fast forward 2 years and on a ride on the London underground, I open everyone’s favourite London Metro and sneering at me from the centre page was the ad campaign for ASOS Africa. I had just started working on www. Paserelle.co.uk at the time and that advert was like water to my fire. My dream of taking London by storm was falling apart.

It is every budding entrepreneur’s nightmare! The moment you realise that you are not the only one thinking how great an idea your idea is. In fact, some people think it is so great; they have already started implementing it.  This has happened to so many of us, and to me obviously, it is almost to be expected when we think up an idea. Remember that idea you thought up in the shower you felt was so unique and will revolutionise the market? The one which was going to be your ticket to the big leagues and the one you kept so tight lipped and close to the chest that even if your left hand was holding on to the idea your right hand wouldn’t know anything was up? Are you nodding your head and smiling at this point? I bet you are, because believe it or not, it has happened to all of us. This is the point which shows the true character of any entrepreneur worth his/her salt. Most people who are on the fence as to whether they should jump will or may at this point throw in the gauntlet and conclude, ‘this is not going to work, someone is already doing it’; ‘The market has already been captured’ and so on

Let me tell you one open secret, there are good ideas every where; hell I thought up about five ideas just walking up to work this morning. Everyone with some form of grey matter between their ears is capable of deducing something that will potentially be a good idea. ASOS was my example and yours could be something else. So when you wake up in the morning, with that burning idea you want to develop, don’t tell yourself you are the only one thinking about it because the chances are you are not and you need not be.

Think about the greatest entrepreneurs that you know of and I am not talking about the Richard Bransons or the Donald Trumps here although they are exceptionally good examples. Let’s bring it closer to home, think of where you are from and the entrepreneurs in there. For instance, if I thought about the entrepreneurs in Ghana, I would think of Kekeli Gadzepko and Ken Ofori-Atta and their Data Bank, I will think of Dr. Kwabena Duffuor and his Uni and Star companies, I will think of the Awuah Darkos and their Vanguard group of companies to mention only a few. These individuals and indeed many successful entrepreneurs were not the first of their kind to enter their industry but somehow they have managed to emerge as one of the leaders of the pack. We stop to ask why and simplest answer is; the success is in the EXECUTION of their good ideas. The thing no one tells you is that, having a good idea is only part of the job done; the execution will determine whether you succeed or fail.

This article is not meant to tell you what execution is because let’s face it, the word is pretty vague. It is meant to get you to redefine your views on business. Help to streamline your thinking and help to give your idea the best chance at succeeding. The statistics for successful execution is dire indeed. The creator’s of the ‘Balance Scorecard’ Robert Norton and David Kaplan conclude that fewer than 10% of well written strategic formulations are well implemented. That is a tiny percentage, so imagine if you implemented your ideas well.

So today, when you decide to take your idea to the next level, try and visualise your business model working in the environment you operate. In your head, use action (dynamic) words rather than static nouns to describe how you want to implement your good idea. By making use of verbs, your brain automatically visualises and starts to process how to get that end goal. For instance, perform this exercise; think about ‘rope’ and try and remember what your brain thinks about? Now think about ‘skipping’ and again imagine what the brain thinks about. You will realise with the rope, your brain literally pictured a rope of some kind but when you try to think of skipping, your brain thinks about actions; one of you jumping up, moving your feet to prevent it from being caught in the moving rope and so forth. Such is the power of the dynamic word.

I may have simplified the concept of execution here, but rest assured it is not easy and it takes a committed person to achieve success. But you are up to the task right?

However, remember, no matter how good of a skipper you are, your skills will only be seen if you have a well functioning rope to start of with. No one ever completed a skipping game with a broken rope. In the same vain Lewis Hamilton cannot win the F1 Grand Prix races with an engine-less car. Execution goes hand in hand with a good idea, well strategized. If your strategy is fundamentally wrong and not seeded in the reality of the industry you are operating in, the chances are you will end up in a similar pile as the many entrepreneurs we never heard of.

If nothing I have said makes sense and you are still thinking someone has already implemented your idea, then maybe this will help. Who remembers Friendster or Hi5? And remember Pepsi, well they were around long before Coca Cola dared to redefine Santa Clause.

The lesson here is that, a good idea is not enough to secure the success or failure of a business. All these late comers found a way to break through the consumer market and so can you. Www. Paserelle.co.uk may be nowhere near as big as ASOS, but that is only today. Ask me again tomorrow and the story line maybe different. So let us go forth and continue with our hustle.

This is my Truth!

BUILDING IDEAS – HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU HAVE A GOOD IDEA?

BUILDING IDEAS – HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU HAVE A GOOD IDEA?

Many people have got it in their heads that the best ideas go unfunded. It is an urban myth. If your idea went unfunded then it is as a result of one or a combination of several of these factors;

• Laziness: This has been the doom of so many brilliant ideas that never took seed. The custodians were too lazy to fully develop the idea to allow investors to see the same potential they saw.
• Fear: The fear of the unknown and the negative What if? We worry ourselves sick about WHAT will happen IF our idea does not work out as we planned? What if the $ never flow in? What if no one ever buys our products? And the most important one; what if I lose all my money pursuing this idea and I end up worse off than when I started. Let me tell you this, no one ever made money worrying, if anything you lose some valuable youthful face. Most people with ideas ask themselves these questions over and over again and eventually start to believe it as the truth and hence stop developing their best idea.
• I Can’t Be Seen Doing This Syndrome: You may currently be holding down a swanky corporate job, walking into a lovely high rise office building each morning wearing you designer suit that cost you an arm and a leg. To the world, everything is going superbly well for you. However, lurking in the deep recesses of your heart and mind is a burning desire to pursue an idea that is so great you wake up each morning thinking about it. Unlike your swanky city job, this idea will not come with a suit or clients to dine in fancy restaurants but it may require a lot of legwork , sweat, a pair of worn down jeans and basically a look as different from your corporate persona as could ever be. Not many people are willing to take on this identity because we may care so much what other people think. We refuse to be the face of our products and hence our ideas never make it far enough to be funded.

So this brings me to the most important part of this article - DO YOU HAVE A GOOD FUNDABLE IDEA?

For an idea to be good it has to meet some basic criteria. It has to;

• Have an addressable market
• Solve a problem for that market
• Have a way to make money and lots of it
• Has to have barriers to entry.

So before you think about pitching an idea to anyone for funding, make sure you have these basic characteristics of a good company because remember, you don’t have to have a good company to obtain funding, what you need are the attributes of a potentially good company and that is what all investors and Business Angels are looking for.

Many people think it is hard for people to identify a good idea. If you have an idea and you tell it to a friend who knows nothing about the industry you are talking about but are immediately able to say that is a rubbish idea, then most likely it is. You will go through this process about 20 times with said friend and eventually she/he says yes to one of the ideas. Now the work is not over, you then move on to someone slightly out of your circle and then pitch the same idea. You may do this about 5-10 times before you start getting annoying but again eventually this person says yes, good idea. After such an exercise, you know you’re ready to try pitching to some investors. It only takes pitching to 2-3 investors before they poke holes into potential problem areas in your ideas.

Sometimes the problems raised may be very fundamental and a potential deal breaker and it is up to you to go back to the drawing board and generate a new idea to counter such problems. We all know what happens if a fundamental problem at this stage cannot be circumvented.I had a similar problem on my first attempt at creating Paserelle - my online African inspired Clothing retail store. Here I was frantically designing and plotting how to bring to market these intricate contemporary  affordable women fashion designs inspired by the African continent. There was one problem - I lived in the UK and my whole production set up from fabric sourcing to manufacturing was based in Ghana. In plane terms, I was not fundable until I could find a way of getting my items to market at the most minimal cost.

And these are just a few musings to get you thinking about your million dollar ideas today. Remember, coming up with an idea is not difficult but coming up with a GOOD idea, now that is hard.

If you are worried about funding for your good idea, don’t sweat it, funding is the easiest part of starting a business. If you have a good product and you execute it correctly to the market, people will come and it is the same with a good idea, investors will line up to invest in your good idea if you have put in the work to show that it is a good idea.

Finally, for every good idea that the world has been lucky enough to see, there have been a thousand or more the world never got to see. So the bravery of doing business is not just about the guys who got the good idea and dared to take the leap without wings or parachute, but bravery is also for the guys who invested so much time in an idea only to realise that it was not going to work. The bravery comes from shelving one’s time invested in an idea and having the courage to think up a new one and start the whole process again.

If you decide to take the leap and jump off the corporate cliff today into your own future, just be sure to build your parachute/wings before you hit the ground.

 This is my Truth!