Category Archives: Leverage Your Expertise

Entrepreneurship: What’s Your Edge?

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Serial entrepreneur Tunde Kehinde’s successful mimic of Amazon astounded Africa—and many others, too. Now, he fosters entrepreneurship across the emerging African market of 1 billion…and beyond.

Dynamic entrepreneur Tunde Kehinde, with three successful start-ups to his credit and another well on the way, shared ideas on entrepreneurship and emerging markets as a speaker, panelist, and attendee at the recent Global Forum. I had the privilege of speaking with Kehinde privately to explore entrepreneurship further.

Listening to Kehinde explain his business theories and strategies, I was struck by one question: “What gives Tunde Kehinde his unique entrepreneurial edge?

The list of career highlights for this man—who has many more decades ahead—is already impressive. When matched with essential entrepreneurial skills, the list explains a lot about his serial success, but not everything…

  • Nigerian Kehinde credits his education and work experience as the foundation of his entrepreneurial success. A finance major, he earned an MBA at Harvard Business School. Hands-on experience as a business development executive with Diageo in London and as an Investment Banking professional with Wachovia Securities in North Carolina and New York City revealed the difference between theory and reality. This experience accounts for his solid foundation in analysis, quick thinking, and flexibility, but it’s only the beginning.
  • This impressive communicator has a warm, natural style and a creative command of public speaking that facilitates his delivery of his point in any context. For all these reasons, he was a popular Forum speaker. One media colleague referred to him as a “rock star” since each time he spoke, lines of attendees gathered, eager to speak with him and snap a pic. Essential communication skills and salesmanship often separate successful entrepreneurs from those who merely have a good idea, but there’s more to this.
  • Kehinde’s track record has created a credibility and momentum that makes future success almost predictable:
  1. Kehinde began by co-founding Bandeka.com, an online dating platform identified by Forbes Magazine as one of the hottest tech start-ups in Africa.
  2. Then, he saw the need for a version of Amazon that would fill infrastructure and other system gaps for Africa and Jumia.com emerged as Nigeria’s leading ecommerce platform. As Co-Founder and former Managing Director of Jumia, Kehinde helped grow the business from 5 employees to almost 1,000 to serve customers across Nigeria.
  3. Next, he emerged as the Co-Founder and Co-Managing Director of Africa Courier Express (ACE) (www.ace.ng), a technology-driven logistics platform, that enables ecommerce companies, financial institutions, and healthcare businesses to ship items directly to consumers across Nigeria. ACE shipped to almost 400,000 customers and collected payments on behalf of 1,000 merchants. ACE plans to expand across Africa.
  4. To address financial and banking barriers for ACE clients, merchants, entrepreneurs, and the growing African online middle class, Kehinde co-launched Lidya.co which offers easy, reliable, secure online access to finances.

What gives Tunde Kehinde his unique entrepreneurial edge?

When I explained to Kehinde that I had met entrepreneurs with credentials similar to his that explained his and their polished professionalism, he nodded. When I went on to say that I saw more than the sum of these parts in his ability, magnetism, and calm resolve, he smiled. When I asked, “How’d you get so smart?” He laughed and began to explain…

Acknowledging the importance of education, career opportunities, and practical start-up experience, Kehinde revealed that his parents were both entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurial mind set was ingrained in him. That’s what makes the difference for him.

That’s the key to a powerful entrepreneurial edge: a clear inner, empowering “you can do it” voice.

This inner determination is either instilled early in life or deliberately acquired later. Parents who embody entrepreneurial drive and repeat entrepreneurial sentiments to their children can be powerful role models. The resulting family environment, can make the business drive to succeed part of both conscious and unconscious thinking and decision making in the next generation.

Family is what gave Kehinde a very early start and a unique entrepreneurial edge. He’s taken it from there.

What gives you your entrepreneurial edge?

Even if your parents were not in business and never encouraged you—or, perhaps were even a discouraging force—that inner certainty came from somewhere. The more conscious you are of how your certainty arose, the more in control of it you’ll be, even in the toughest times.

For more from Tunde Kindhe…see “Harnessing the Potential of Emerging Middle-Class Markets” in “Explore New Markets At A Global Forum”

Back to HOME… TheCatalyst.com

Part 2: Framework Responsive to Millennials

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Mobile-friendly or responsive websites and online content are vital if you aim to attract and serve millennials.

Research proved to Boston-based social enterprise Framework Homeownership, LLC that mobile-savvy millennials make up more than 35% of the target for their national online home buyer course, so creating a mobile-friendly or responsive version of their highly-regarded home education resource was a “no brainer.”

For-profit Framework arose out of the combined efforts of two leading national nonprofits that share empowerment mandates to build strong communities: the Housing Partnership Network and the Minnesota Homeownership Center. The social enterprise has two main directives:

  1. Access: Any time, anywhere, anyone…responsive home education which sets a high standard for home buying and home ownership
  2. Revenue Sharing: Framework’s future lies in partnerships—profits shared with non-profits and for-profits intent on serving their real-estate-intent clients with unbiased online education.

Framework’s Holly Mott, Vice President of Brand Marketing, reports that almost 80,000 Americans from all 50 states have completed the online course since its creation in 2013—including more than 49,000 this year!

Even if real-estate-intent millennials are not your prime target, you can learn a lot from how strategically this innovative home education organization serves users and partners.

Framework has done many things right in communicating its “responsive” intent in all senses of the word:

  • The online course, with optional downloadable content, is available in English for platforms from mobile to desktop. (The Spanish version is not yet mobile friendly.)
  • The course has proven to be such a strong buyer-be-aware starting point that Fannie Mae made it an eligibility requirement for a major program. Wells Fargo and others see the value of home education for their clients.
  • The fee is counterbalanced by readily-available discounts and coupons (scholarships) from advisory partners and growing numbers of lending and real estate professionals.
  • Framework acknowledges that expanding product offerings and applications is essential for continued connections. For instance, free monthly email content concentrates on what new homeowners need to know. The expanding national network of free, unbiased expert advisors (not salespeople) keeps millennials and other buyers, sellers, and borrowers coming back to Framework.
  • Mott says they broke start-up rules by launching in 2012 with just one product—the online course. However, Framework has built significant credibility by developing the best-possible, high-standard responsive course and online platform. This effort is very deliberately balanced by establishment of an industry-wide advisory and partnership network. Now, next steps can be giant steps. Three new products are in the R&D phase. Future plans will transform the responsive site into a revolutionary online platform to create new national standards for home-buying and ownership education and to let consumers, including millennials, reap the real estate rewards.

How responsive is your online presence?
Do you understand your target markets well enough to be responsive—online and off—to what they want and to what they may not realize they need from you?

Resource:
To learn more about Framework:

Back to HOME… TheCatalyst.com

Trust Earning: Do You Deserve Client Trust?

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Risk aversion stops many good things from happening when it is supposed to stop bad things. Trust is the antidote to risk aversion.

Professionals must communicate their trustworthiness to earn trust and build lasting relationships with prospects and clients.

Natural fear of taking action or making a decision is meant to preserve our health, property, way of life, and sanity, but it can do the opposite. As far as prospects and clients are concerned, their trust will be earned by professionals who show consistent, genuine interest in the wellbeing of the prospect or client. Unless this client concern is visible in every facet of the work carried out by the professional for and with clients, trust may not be achieved and the relationship will remain superficial.

Clients’ interests should be transparently and prominently placed above the professionals’ interests. This commitment materializes as services that are relevant to target client needs and as delivery methods that match the professional’s process and organizational support.

For instance, whether a client filters the world through their smartphone or prefers emails interspersed with phone or face-to-face meetings, they’ll be receptive to placing trust in professionals who respect client communication preferences. Professionals who commit to client needs and goals discover many ways to demonstrate their trustworthiness.

Trust is also earned by professionals who deliver on promises and responsibilities without prompting or excuses. If it’s not clear to clients that they are in sync with the professional, has the professional genuinely earned their trust?

Perception is the reality in earning client loyalty. The client’s definition of trust sets the standard for professionals to meet and exceed in everything from communication to service delivery:

  • Should trusting include the client questioning the professional, or is unquestioning acceptance demanded by the professional?
  • Is the professional’s reaction defensive or offensive if their knowledge or skill is challenged?
  • Does the client understand exactly what you, the professional, expect from them and from yourself as the relationship progresses?
  • From the start, clients deserve to understand what “trust” will mean to both of you, and to outcomes. Clients should trust themselves to be sure about this.

Will you share this post with your prospects and clients because you want to open up the lines of communication and earn trust?

© Source: What’s Your Point? PJ Wade The Catalyst

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How Wanting Social Media ‘Likes’ Can Undermine Personal Service

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Behaviorists and researchers have discovered that obsession with posting photos and checking phones corresponds with lower enjoyment.

For professionals, “lower enjoyment” extrapolates to lowered personal service. Your clients may be shutting you out or down when they keep an eye on the screen, but are you doing the same thing to them by keeping an eye on your screen for social media updates and texts instead of giving clients your full attention?

Social media isn’t only distracting, it’s dictating how we interact in person. What important moment or event has your social media trophy-hunting behavior caused you to miss out on? What are you doing to take advantage of your knowledge and experience for your clients and your business?

My point is that distraction over superficial online responses should not take priority over giving your full, face-to-face attention to the client you’re with. Aren’t you curious why they believed a visit to you, not a text or phone call, was worth their time and effort?

1. If you can’t successfully juggle client relationships and social media, shouldn’t you reevaluate priorities, improve time management strategies, or hire an assistant? What are you intent on achieving with social media and your clients?
2. Curiosity about your clients feeds success with client service and satisfaction. If social media is burning up curiosity that should go to clients, what replacement value is social media contributing to you and your practice?

If you can’t give the client your full attention, why have a face-to-face meeting?

Source: “What’s Your Point? Cut The Crap, Hit The Mark & Stick!” by PJ Wade

Back to HOME… TheCatalyst.com

Determined Futurist or Wish-Distracted Fatalist?

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We are often more aware we have a future when a new year begins or we make a fresh start, like going back to school or launching a new venture. The rest of the time, the future is all but ignored. 

Even when we think about the future, “wait and see” is a common response to “How’s this all going to turn out?” However, you aren’t a leaf passively blowing in the wind of change, but a proactive agent for your own future—when you chose to be! “Wait and see” is the passive approach few can afford. It’s already cost too many too much.

Are you a determined futurist (“If it is to be, it’s up to me”), or a wish-distracted fatalist (“I guess it wasn’t meant to be”). I can’t help you achieve the latter, but the shift to determined futurist is right up my alley and a key “What’s Your Point?” theme… Continue reading →

10 TIPS for Complex Decisions Made Simple

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Professionals, including advisors, executives, and entrepreneurs, are decisive by nature and training, so it’s not surprising that many often think they are great decision-makers.

Some professionals even believe that making decisions quickly is a sign of decisiveness, which it isn’t necessarily. Commonly, after a few years on the job, most professionals feel they have learned all there is about the decision-making process. They believe it’s just content in the form of product specifications, office procedures, and client “hot topics” that change, not decision making.

The more you understand about the PROCESS OF DECIDING relative to your target market and business, Continue reading →

5 Foresight Strategies for Avoiding Hindsight Remorse

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You can be certain in the face of uncertainty.

Beforehand, success is less about knowing you’re right, and more about taking steps to ensure you’re not proven dangerously wrong after you decide.

For instance, pundits and professionals usually can’t agree on the state of the market and where the economy is headed, but if you’re certain you want to become a business owner, or you feel ready to move on from this business and into the next, go for it.

That’s not encouragement to “jump in over your financial head,” or to go against obvious economic or social warning signs in your industry or area. This is encouragement to take a close look at Continue reading →

SELF-TEST: What’s a Failed FOLLOW UP Cost You?

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There’s no crying in baseball and there’s no “slipped through the cracks” in business follow-up with prospects and clients, external and internal.

Yet, time and again, entrepreneurs, executives, and professionals explain the cost of their failure to follow up with a prospect or client by saying, “They just slipped through the cracks.”

As if the prospect or client had caused the problem!

First of all, there’s no “slipped” in effective communication.

When you fail to do what you said you’d do, prospects and clients don’t slip away from you. They run. Today’s smart-phone-savvy consumers want answers now and results even faster. Disgruntled prospects and frustrated clients will quickly turn to receptive professionals who can be trusted to do what they say they’ll do. Wouldn’t you if you were intent on doing business, but an unreliable executive or salesperson got in the way?

And, there are no “cracks” either, just the pockets of more organized, efficient professionals.

The prospects and clients who you let down or ignore don’t abandon their plans, they abandon you, because you abandoned them. Their business transaction will still happen, just without you. The income or commission that could have been yours ends up in the pocket of the professional who followed through, earned trust, and enabled the client to achieve their goals.

Don’t kid yourself. When you say you’ll do something, then in the minds of over-stressed prospects and clients, you just made a promise. When you promise to do more than you deliver on—whether that’s failing to return phone calls, email information, or…you let down those who you need to earn trust from. You also let yourself down—now and in the future.

WYPt SELF-TEST: WHAT IS FAILURE TO FOLLOW UP COSTING ME?

Let one prospect “slip through the cracks” when you don’t follow up on emails, promises to call, or on anything you committed to do, and you’re the loser on many levels. As you read through the following list of repercussions of abandoning a prospect or client, use the average income or commission you earn on your typical preferred transaction to add up how much just one failure to follow up may cost you:
1. Lost commission for that first prospect or client transaction: $ ____________
2. Lost commission from subsequent referrals from that individual if they had been well-served by you (let’s say 2 more deals you won’t get): $ _____________ X 2 = $ ____________
3. Lost commission from that new client’s next transaction: $ ____________
4. Lost commission from future business from that client and future referrals: $ __________
5. Those un-followed-up-on prospects and clients will spread word of your failings to anybody who’ll listen. Every time your name or industry comes up, those disgruntled individuals will chime in with “promises were made.” You may never know how many more clients and referrals you lose. Or, social media may reveal exactly how wide ranging the prospect’s or client’s negative reach is. Be optimistic and only dock yourself two deals here, but add to this amount your advertising budget for counteracting your proven bad service rating: 

$ __________ X 2 = $ ___________ + $ _____________ = $ _____________

What’s your TOTAL COST OF A FAILED FOLLOW UP?  $ _____________

Even If your average income or commission per deal were only $3000, this list could represent a loss of $21,000 plus the cost of advertising that is undermined by word of mouth and social media activity. Failure to follow up is expensive!

Since not following up is a bad habit, those who do it once will repeat this self-defeating behavior again and again.

This means your total from one missed deal multiplied by how many times a year you drop the ball with a prospect or client is…. Do yourself a favor and do the “bad habit” math: $ __________ .

Attach a dollar figure to follow through, so you always relate the promises you make—from phone calls, texts, or emails to research or marketing—to your bottom line. This enables you to move from “it’s only a phone call or email” to making business decisions about opportunities to lose or to earn credibility and income.

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4 Signs of Invisible PROCRASTINATION

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Are you sure you’re modernizing and making-over your thinking and decision making at the same rate that your technology is continuously up-dated?

We are obsessed with “up dates” in everything from smartphones to our homes. “Make-overs” are standard requirements for every aspect of our lives. All this up-dating, and yet too many people persist with out-of-date thinking.

Procrastination—the easiest, difficult thing you can do—can be the culprit when thinking approaches are out of date: Continue reading →