Come rain, come shine, if a business you own or work with will survive, it is largely up to the founders and employees, not the government.
I lost the logistics game to the more insightful founders of Mall4Africa and now, GlobalMall – that was my fault not the fault of the government.
As an entrepreneur, my responsibility to my shareholders, staff and customers who sought value from the services I offered was to ensure that the value I offered remained much more valuable everyday than the circumstances and challenges of the environment, everyday I wake up.
Once I was not able to pivot my services during the volatile FX challenges of 2015 through 2016, such that the value offered was more important than other essential commodities needed by customers and potential users of the service I offered, the obvious thing was death of the business considering I was unable to hold out while the volatility of FX raged.
The alternative to pivoting the existing business would have been to start a totally unrelated service that added value but my entrepreneurial mind got stuck and after doing my numbers, I decided to close shop.
Often times, I hear how many rage, rant and fault recessions for the downfall of their businesses but fail to have a closer look at their ability to assess their own personal abilities and capacities to gauge and stay ahead of factors such as how valuable is the service or goods you are offering in a volatile market filled with fickle consumers like Nigeria.
If you are not offering a monopolised product or service, take a step back and restrategise to aim for that status, else, once recession knocks, it will not check the colour of your skin or the language you speak – it will knock the hell out of your business and your job.
Building businesses is not beans, staying employed is not a privilege either – shine your eyes. Stay hungry, stay foolish!
Written by Morakinyo Mo Beckley