General

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to be part of a mentoring session with a Founder Institute cohort at the Stanbic Bank Incubator in Accra. It was good, very good. Joining us were Foster Awintiti Akugri, the Stanbic Bank Incubator Manager & Founder of Hacklab Foundation, and Kamil Nabong, the CEO at Hub and Fund. The picture you see here is full of brilliant start-ups that attended the mentoring and idea-sharing session on Customer Development. The hotseat was just as fun as well. Founders get 60-seconds to pitch their start-ups and get instant feedback. The energy with this is electrifying, because many times you can see the passion in the eyes and hear it in the voices of these guys. Still, where is it all headed? Are they locking down customers? Is that passion being channelled properly to drive up sales and grow customers? This is what the Founder Institute is all about: learning from those who’ve already done it and drawing from their personal experiences and lessons learned. It’s like a cheat code to manoeuvring your start-up. I will detail what I spoke on. I spoke last so I had to freestyle anyways. No need to rehash what everyone can read in a textbook. So, let’s get the textbook stuff outta the way then I’ll add my personal experience. What is Customer Development? A lot of the time, your idea is sound, or at least it will be after a little tweak and fine-tune here and there. Your product is also something someone can buy 9 out of 10 times. The problem that most start-ups face is a lack of LOYAL CUSTOMERS. Because… well… they’re just starting. Customer Development is the formal process used to discover, test and validate many business ideas, all towards building the right product the customer will actually opt for.  Steve Blank, in his 2005 book titled ‘The Four Steps to the Epiphany’, wrote about his life as an entrepreneur in the 90’s while in Silicon Valley and what he saw several start-ups do to launch their products. A pattern began to form right before his eyes after analysing his collaborations with start-up after start-up. He noticed that a start-up is not just a smaller version of a big company. A start-up has unique problems, totally different from that of a big company. So, he figured start-ups should be asking certain questions: Who exactly are our unique customers? What exactly do they need? What product/service features will they prefer? How can I properly communicate with them? What strategies can help maintain customer growth? A startup or start–up is a company or project within the first stage of its operations, initiated by one or more entrepreneurs to seek, effectively develop, and validate a scalable business model. Start-ups are usually a shoestring endeavour as opposed to a fully-grown company. Steve Blank concluded that for start-ups to survive, they need to have a methodical means of arriving at “repeatable and scalable business models”. He identifies a four-step framework that is designed to lead you to a product or service that the customer actually wants, while the stepwise process helps you to intimately understand your target market.  The four steps of the framework are: Customer Discovery: You have to identify and understand a specific product or service that solves a specific problem for a specific group of people. Customer Validation: After Step 1, this product solves a problem but make sure the target market is large enough to sustain a viable business. Customer Creation: After the two steps above, make sure the business is scalable through repeatable sales and marketing procedures. Company Building/Transition: Your start-up is now ready to move from an informal start-up to a formal organisation very much focused on implementing your validated business model. What I like about this four-step framework is that it is suitable for start-ups in the early stages of their development while also being perfectly suitable to large companies looking to expand or better their already existing products or services. When deployed properly, Customer Development helps any business become more efficient by providing an acute focus on where to direct capital and other resources. You are more likely to find the right product for the right market this way. Product-Market Fit is the key to accelerated market traction. So that concludes the textbook content. The cohort were very much interested in hearing how Foster, Kamil and I executed simple methods that moved our respective companies a step closer to customer growth. The session was fun. Kamil detailed useful ways of executing the steps in the above framework, like methods of information gathering from the customer amongst many others. Foster Akugri? That sharp guy Foster? I get why Stanbic Bank Ghana has so much faith in him. He is the King of useful quips and brainstorming and we all mooched on that. Looking back at how you overcame some struggle always brings a smile. The real fun is when we all realise that at the start-up phase, we are all slaying our very own Goliaths, only with difference faces from different sectors.  Here are 4 tools I shared as what helped a couple of friends build Maxwell Investments Group. 1. Drop the ego. The world can be cruel. The business community can be very harsh. As a start-up, I couldn’t keep count of the number of doors shut in our faces. Everyone has a “rude receptionist” story. We had many dozens by the first year. Your target market are the same people that will belittle and mock your idea. It will not feel like you’re on a transformational journey of corporate enlightenment. No. It more probably feels like a gut punch or a slap in the face. When you remove the filter of an ego, you stop reacting, you stop interrupting, you start listening and then a lot of the work with implementing the four-step framework start resolving itself. At times, what you require is really as simple as sales, the customer’s money in exchange for your product or service. Why not drop the

Farming and Agribusiness are back in vogue! Something is definitely up there when of all the choices available to him, famous actor and political aspirant John Dumelo opts to be a large-scale farmer. That’s because he gets it. That’s because he knows that by growing farm produce for both human and animal consumption, he taps into an agricultural sector that contributes to almost 20% of Ghana’s gross domestic product (GDP). In 2009, that figure was 30.99%. The inevitable rise of industry and the incorporation of formal business models into every scalable enterprise brought boundless opportunity for every business sector. Ghanaian farmers get that even more now. The 2010 Population & Housing Census revealed that, even though agricultural households accounted for 54.2% of the total population, a large number of the members of those households lacked formal education. That situation is vastly different now. Agriculture continues to marry Business Models Today, I know medical doctors, professionals in tech, and yes even most famed actors who are heavily into farming or agribusiness because they understand what happens when agriculture marries business models properly. It is the pursuit of that marriage that impels our nation’s General Agricultural Workers’ Union (GAWU) of Ghana’s Trade Union Congress (TUC), founded in 1959,to appoint me as their first-ever Business Advisor to the collective whose members are tens of thousands strong. I have always found labour unions remarkable in their ability to facilitate growth and welfare by quite easily demonstrating the popular adage of the whole being much larger than the sum of the individual parts. From Farm to Fork I am not and will not be involved in wage negotiations, employee benefits nor anything remotely in that line. My mandate is to expedite business momentum and trade. My network and I will be providing real business opportunities, real business solutions and not excuses. Maxwell Investments Group and its affiliates like our trading subsidiary, TAFT Commodities (est. 2006), already incorporate many of these into our supply-chain enabling activities while we endeavour to take harvests all the way from farm to fork. Farmers get a bigger win when they are aware of basic economic concepts like turnover and value chain. So just like how a grain of soya bean takes calculated steps to becoming nutritious soy milk, Ghana farmers are finally getting there. I have witnessed it. For instance, coffee bean farmers in the Akuapem area are utilising the commodity as a catalyst for rapid rural development under budding companies like Asili and it’s beautiful. Ghana’s farmers are better positioned now to engage you because they are adopting Trade Facilitation principles and guidelines that will continue to serve them very well. Trade Facilitation The main goal of our Trade Facilitation efforts is to get farmers to export more in a faster, safer, more affordable and more standardised way. Imagine your local farmers effortlessly trading with global markets, moving a majority of their harvests for exports. The processes require some degree of simplification for the average farmer to comprehend the formalities, documentation and other complexities of the export-import markets. We do what it takes. This is happening now in Ghana. Farmers are seeking to have more of the available rewards on the whole value chain. It is not without its challenges. As farmers try to shy from “middlemen” who negotiate deals that have more of the available margins tilted towards them, many have been forced through countless disappointments and setbacks to have a healthy appreciation for the formal safeguards that protect exporters. As Business Advisor to GAWU, I have heard many tales, even recently, of financial losses that I feel may have been averted if only these farmers understood the different avenues available to them. I keep telling them, “You have to address what happens IF you’ve done your part well and they still say no; with your capital stuck in these exports, you are going to be negotiated down regardless of your CAD agreements”, and this happens to them a lot. These unpleasant conversations are always necessary to open farmers’ eyes to the fact that they have the power to negotiate for better payment terms and delivery requirements through the insertion of clauses that address these loopholes. Many importers respect farmers that demand for reciprocity of quality delivery. This is because by demanding for reciprocated value, you prove your competency and knowhow to deliver in the first place. Nonetheless, Ghanaian Farmers continue to build a strong capacity to tap into foreign markets by adopting these four (4) principles of our Trade Facilitation efforts with them: Standardisation Harmonisation Simplification Transparency Standardisation Standardisation is one of the first steps towards Trade Facilitation. If you’ve been to the typical community market in Ghana, you’d know the only modus operandi is that there is no modus operandi; it’s all about how well you bargain, and outsiders usually get crushed. For cash crops, Ghanaian farmers are moving towards readily accepting standardisation guidelines. Standardisation is the creation of the framework of a set of agreements on trading parameters to which all parties of an industry, local and abroad, must adhere. This is to make sure that all the processes within said industry associated with the production of goods and services are done within the agreed upon working parameters. Ghana Cocoa Board is one of the best examples of how a regulatory body can so well standardise the growing and trading of a cash crop. Standardisation efforts by our local farmers are painting a familiar picture to importers outside, thus creating the trust and encourage for trade participation. Harmonisation After the creation of working frameworks of agreed trading parameters, farmers in Ghana are understanding that all these should mimic and mirror how things are done in other countries within the international trading community as well. Conversation moves along much more smoothly when responses are filled with “oh yes that’s how we also do it in our country”. Cashew farmers in Ghana are starting to accept the need to adopt harmonisation at a faster pace, in

There was once a Shepherd-boy who watched over a flock of sheep near a village. Three or four times, he brought out all the villagers by crying “Help me! The wolf is attacking!” But when his neighbours came to help him, he laughed at them saying, “Haha there is no Wolf. I was only tricking you!” The Wolf, however, did truly come at last. The Shepherd-boy, now really alarmed, shouted in agony and in terror: “Pray, do come and help me; the Wolf is killing the sheep!” Yet, no one paid any attention to his cries, nor rendered any assistance. The Wolf, having no reason to fear, at his leisure, destroyed the whole flock. There is no believing a liar, even when he speaks the truth. Mr. Boakye and I were having lunch with a few others when the names of two prominent businessmen came up in conversation. They were not the topic of our discussions, mind you. At the mention of the Honourable Kennedy Agyapong, Mr Boakye lit up and said “ahaaa that man, his A is his A and his B is his B; he will talk plenty but end up exceeding your expectations and you will be impressed”. Nobody present seemed to disagree, be it verbally or in gesture. But at the mention of a second man, Mr. Boakye said, “forget about that man; this man suffers from a bankruptcy of goodwill”. Everybody laughed, supposedly in agreement. I laughed because everyone was laughing. But I had never heard of the second man. I had no reason to believe he wasn’t up to the task. Yet, until an incident changes it, I probably associate the second man with an inability to deliver. “Bankruptcy of Goodwill”. That’s a rather peculiar phrase. It stuck with me. In one swoop, any opportunities at that table was put outside the second man’s reach. His reputation cost him. So I thought, how does Goodwill and Reputation work when we take one individual as a business entity? What is GOODWILL The total value of any good brand, be it a person or a company, is always more than the sum of all of its tangible assets. The whole should always be greater than the sum of its parts. That excess value, is goodwill. Goodwill does not take physical form. It’s not a tangible asset like a house or car. Yet, it still adds value to whoever owns it. If a non-physical feature of a business entity can be clearly and easily demonstrated, and if that feature results in the creation of value, then that value just mentioned is goodwill. Examples of intangible elements that contribute to your goodwill are customer lists, licences, ‘contacts’, and intellectual property such as copyrights and trade secrets. After reading this again, I am really seeing why Mr Boakye viewed Honourable Kennedy Agyapong as not lacking goodwill, compared to the second man. Goodwill is not about physical money or assets. What is REPUTATION               Your business reputation is the sum of all the things that other people feel about you or your business, based on one or more experiences they’ve had with you or your business. It comes from the information they’ve gathered elsewhere or from the horse’s own mouth, whether true or not. Reputation exists both online and offline, in both your loyal customers and followers, and also in complete strangers. You can have an idea of how you want to be perceived by others. But how the public sees you or your business is never necessarily how you plan it. Reputation is tricky, very fickle. Easy to lose a good one, hard to do away with a bad one. What’s the difference between Goodwill and Reputation? It’s common to use these two terms interchangeably. But they are different. Goodwill is generated from actual business. To create goodwill, there needs to be a genuine availability of goods and/or services in connection to the intangible elements mentioned earlier. Real business needs to be done using these intangible elements, by making products available or providing services. Reputation require something much simpler: only awareness. That’s all. Once you become aware of the characteristics of an entity, true or untrue, real or fictional, that knowledge you have creates a reputation for it. You don’t need actual business or transactions to create a reputation. Nothing like that. It doesn’t even need to be in the same country as you, nor the same planet as you. For example: Kasapreko Alomo Bitters may be so popular all over the world that its reputation crosses borders and continents into countries like Morocco and Dubai without a single bottle of Kasapreko ever being in that country. No business needs to be transacted for reputation to be created. The awareness alone, maybe through social media and interviews and trade shows, is enough to create a solid reputation overseas. Reputation is a serious issue because of its volatility. As corporate men and women, of course we would all like for others to think good things about us. It makes business much easier. But as we’ve just discussed, reputation goes far beyond just how we look like or what we appear to be. Reputation is affected by everything we do. That’s in the literal sense. Literally everything you do contributes to your reputation. The way you talk. The way you walk. What you say. Where you step. Every decision you made since waking up from bed. Even your body language. These are all factors that reinforce your reputation. Reputation affects everything we do. While your reputation is being affected by everything you do, it is also deciding everything you do at the same time. A good or bad reputation will make it easy or hard to do certain things at certain places. In this way, your reputation determines which actions you take, while every action you are taking is feeding the current reputation. Reputation is everywhere. You can’t run from Reputation because by mere breathing, you are creating it. Even after