Great perspective from Tekedia Mini-MBA alum, Anwuli Emmanuella Awogu. In this linked article, she shares 7 lessons which can help business owners and entrepreneurs thrive, as they pursue their missions, drawing perspectives from a movie. Here are the 7 lessons with my commentary after each.

1. Be Unashamed of Promoting your Business: in a world where controlling demand is strategic, if you do not promote it, you have no mission.
2. The Importance of Brand Positioning: supply is unbounded which means finding your spot in that ocean is important.
3.  Not Every Risk is Worth Taking: blessed is he/she who knows the right battle to fight.
4.  Documentation is Key: you can only improve what you measure – and documentation is part of that process.
5. Innovate or Die: If you allow others to set the new basis of competition, you have one option available – extinction. 
6.  Know When to Quit: If all fails, pivot because tomorrow has promises. Fighting the good fight means leaving some fights and entering some new ones.
7. Brand Promise is Key: digital systems have built new nexus of trust, making it possible to break the old rules “do not enter a stranger’s car” [Uber] and do not sleep in a stranger’s house [Airbnb]. If you check, Uber and Airbnb have broken the fears of your grandparents on safety. Yes, a brand is more than a logo!

Here is the piece.

This man seems out of this planet. Yes, Elon Musk is offering to do a contract the city bureaucrats have quoted for $1 billion at a time duration of 4 years, for $30 million and within 6 months: “Elon Musk told Miami’s mayor Friday that The Boring Company could dig a two-mile tunnel under the city for as little as $30 million — a fraction of the $1 billion price tag once quoted by local transit officials. Musk also told the Mayor that The Boring Company could complete the job in six months, versus the original four year estimate.” 

When you discuss a new basis of competition, this is a great example. Great companies set a new basis of competition, making it impossible for competitors to exist.

If you run a business where you are quoting $1 billion to do a job in 4 years, and another is asking for $30 million for 6 months, you will agree with me that you are out of business.

Mayor Francis Suarez shared these details about his “wonderful call” with Musk in a video posted to Twitter. “He’s focused on trying to deliver a project that will have the maximum utility for our residents for the least amount of money,” Suarez said. “The order of magnitude in terms of savings is significant.”

Just had my call w/ @elonmusk regarding @boringcompany tunnels coming to MIA

DETAILS BELOW?? pic.twitter.com/NsJFYcvGeQ

— Mayor Francis Suarez (@FrancisSuarez) February 5, 2021

We will have Mr. Stanley Jacob at Tekedia Live next month. He will discuss fintech, payment and ecosystems.  A director in Mastercard West Africa, he managed Consumer Payments in Ecobank and Digital Banking in Standard Chartered Bank. At Tekedia Live, we bring global thought-leaders in different sectors for deep conversations with the Tekedia Institute Mini-MBA community. A former head of Coca Cola India is coming.

Tekedia Institute offers an innovation management 12-week program, optimized for business execution and growth, with digital operational overlay. It runs 100% online. The theme is Innovation, Growth & Digital Execution – Techniques for Building Category-King Companies. All contents are self-paced, recorded and archived which means participants do not have to be at any scheduled time to consume contents.

The richest man in China makes and sells bottled water. Yes, Zhong Shanshan is ahead of Alibaba founder Jack Ma  on the mantle. Bottled water has brought an estimated $94 billion empire to him, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He is also the 7th richest person in the world, well ahead of Warren Buffett and Google Co-founder, Sergey Brin.

People, who says a pure water manufacturer in Nigeria cannot ride to the mountaintop? Now, you can understand why the government should not be selecting winners with preferential treatments here and there. Even the techies must not have it easier when benchmarked with those packaging groundnuts. For all the vibes of Chinese technology, the king is a bottle water man. That tells you where the real beats are.

Yes, besides coding, there are many ways to ride to the top; I made that same point in a well received article in the Harvard Business Review a few years ago.

• Chinese billionaire Zhong Shanshan is the richest person in Asia.
• The 66-year-old billionaire, who chairs both bottled water company Nongfu Spring and vaccine maker Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise, made more than $70 billion in 2020.
• Zhong’s lifestyle appears to be much more low-key than that of Asia’s previous richest man, Mukesh Ambani, who’s known for living in a reported $1 billion home and mingling with Beyoncé and Hillary Clinton.
• Zhong is known as the “Lone Wolf” and rarely makes public appearances or speaks to the media.
• He lives in an apartment in Hangzhou’s Xihu district, which borders the city’s scenic West Lake.(source: Business Insider)

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In Nigeria’s case, we kill one to save the other. We wanted rice farmers to succeed, so we needed to close the borders and kill off any business that relies on land borders to survive. And in order to keep the herders and their cows happy, we need to sacrifice the crop farmers and their farmlands.

To keep the BDCs in business, we need to kill the naira, so by creating multiple exchange rates, we can mint new millionaires by mere roundtripping. To ensure that no part of the country grows faster than the other, we need to kill innovation and meritocracy, while scaling mediocrity.

To send every kid to the university, we need to kill quality, just erect buildings and name them universities and then keep the fees low; only to mass produce illiteracy.

Is there a sector where we are not killing something to give life to the other? This is Nigeria’s story, a story of people with misguided notion of what essence of existence is.

Do not be in a hurry to blame it on politics or a particular group, most creatures here have warped and pitiful understanding of what it means to live, rather than mere existence.

If we spend more time in reflection and introspection, maybe minds can be liberated and elevated.

Something to remember.

No company does it better. Join me to congratulate portfolio Eonsfleet Prosolutions Limited for finalizing its next generation technology to digitise and optimise the logistics value chain across Africa and provide support to growing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the supply chain and logistics industry.

Today, our solution, Eonsfleet Logistics Control Tower Solution, delivers seamless, end-to-end integration and visibility of all resources and assets across a company’s distribution network, and beyond. With the tower, your assets are visible, anywhere you have them located!

Congratulations to our CEO Tokunbo Olaitan Arannilewa who continues to lead this company from one phase to another. And to our team, gboza.

Unless you can measure it, you cannot improve it. Talk to Tokunbo for a roadmap.