How often do you wash your towel? Some people wash once a week, while some, once a year. The towel is a fertile breeding ground for millions of microbes, especially those found on human skin and on the gut. No wonder the towel is one of the objects that facilitate fecal-oral contamination (literally connecting the two ends of the gut). Worse still, most people keep towels in the bathroom (near the toilet). Every flush of the toilet sends mist with millions of microbes, ranging from H.pylori, salmonella and other deadly bacteria and viruses. When you wash your hands ready for a meal, and dry them with your body towel, there's high chance you are directly ingesting your fecal matter, or, if in a shared lavatory, someone else's faeces. Unless cleaned well, viruses such as human papillomavirus (causes warts, anal cancer and cervical cancer) can be transmitted when towels are shared with infected individuals. So, what to do? 1. Launder towels once a week. 2. Use hot water and det...
About 30 years ago I wrote a letter that changed my life as an entrepreneur. I've told some of you about this before.
I had come across a newspaper article announcing the private sector arm of the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, was setting up a special fund to help what they called at the time “Small and Medium Size Businesses” - SMEs. [We don’t really use that term much anymore; today we say “Entrepreneurs].
The article was right there in the local newspaper that we all #Read. But I read to DO, so I always have a pen and paper... READY to FOLLOW UP!
Back then there was no email, no Internet. I decided to write a letter and then had to wait months and months for the reply. A black guy from Guyana eventually wrote back, and said he was one of the people working on it.
To cut a long story short: he traveled to Harare to undertake a Due Diligence of my first little business. Together we worked on my Business Plan. He actually had the first laptop that I had ever seen! I had only a desktop.
It must have taken six months, and at least five visits by Dr Lawrence Clarke, to help me develop an investable Business Plan.
During those six months, I learnt more about financing structures, and debt and equity in a business, than I had known in five years.
At the time, it was only $250,000. But the #Principles including the 3Ps that I learnt would apply to any amount you need.
In addition to #People, #Product and #Process that I've talk to you about for years, let me leave you with a few more P's...
1. #Persistence!
One of the hallmarks of a good entrepreneur is #Persistence. However, a note of caution: “Persistence without insight will usually lead to the same result—failure!” [anon]
You must be persistent, yes, but you must first seek clarity and INSIGHT before trying again! Never allow your emotions, or sense of injustice [perceived or real] to cloud how you go back in, to try again.
I’m the most #Persistent person you will ever meet, but I do so through the constant pursuit of #Insight. How else can I approach this?
What mistakes did I make last time? I go over the minutest of detail. I consult people who are not emotionally invested, yet knowledgeable [on the matter at hand].
2. #Patience!
If you are going to succeed at anything as an entrepreneur, you will need #Patience. Lots and lots of it! I cannot stress enough: Everything I have tried to show you, there is also an implicit message about the importance of Patience.
Yes, I know that in America, some young entrepreneurs can create multi-billionaire businesses almost overnight. That is good, and I hope it happens to some of you, but that's not going to be the case for 99% of you, and you should have the humility to accept that.
Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson are #MasterClass entrepreneurs, but their ventures 20+ years in the making!
I first started thinking about the business that's now Liquid Intelligent Technologies in 1997. It would be more than 15 years before the first investor believed in what I was trying to do with it. And now global investors have turned it into the largest business in my group.
Patience, patience, patience!
3. #Plan to #PLANT
Learn this from the farmer:
__If you don’t actually #Plant something, you have nothing!
A farmer knows that it is important to plan properly for the next season, but you cannot continue to #Plan forever without doing anything.
You don’t wait for the perfect conditions to get started. Everything is a risk; you don’t know whether the crop will not fail before harvest; you don’t know if there will be a change in the market. If problems come, you cannot pack your crop and run.
You must work in the conditions, because you don’t control at least 80% of the conditions you will face, and yet for that 20% or less, you take the risk.
# Are you asking yourself the right questions?
# Are you making observations that really matter? [For so many of you now on this platform, the answer is increasingly YES!]
# ARE YOU ACTING ON WHAT YOU HAVE LEARNT?
There will be many opportunities for you, even today, such as the one I had the day when I saw that article.
Almost every day I write stuff for you that is just as important as that newspaper article, but you and you alone, are the one to ACT.
If I get you to accept this, there is nothing you cannot do!
"Keep your eyes on the stars but your hands at the task" [adapted from Theodore Roosevelt
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