KALAN AU USA

19/12/2023

06/10/2023

Click here and accept my invitation on Temu app! 🎁

18/06/2023

Laïcité au 🇲🇱

12/06/2023

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12/06/2023

“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.” – Benjamin Franklin, American statesman, writer, and inventor

This week, we challenge you to think about how to invest in your future. Where do you start?

25/05/2023

25/05/2023

How do you turn a small business, into a big business? (Part 3).

Step 1. Study how organizations are built and managed.

In my first post on this subject, I referred you to a link, showing the five largest companies, in the world, using the measure of revenue generation. I also showed you that revenue generation is just one of the recognized measures we use to assess the size of a business.
I asked the question, how does one build a BIG company, like Walmart, which has a turnover of nearly $500bn, employing over 2 million employees? This company is bigger than the economies of nearly all the African countries, and has more workers, than many countries!

When I started out in business, nearly 30 years ago, one of the first things, I realised was the importance of learning how to build, and manage an organisation..........No matter how great your business idea, no matter how smart you are, no matter, how innovative you idea, no matter how much money you raise:
Listen to me:
If you do not know how to build, and manage an organization, you will either fail, or you will never be able to realise your dream.
The difference between those people who are good entrepreneurs, and those who are great entrepreneurs, is the capacity to build and manage an organisation, that is effective, efficient, and innovative, even as it gets bigger and bigger, and bigger.

"This is not something that comes to you naturally. It is a skill you have to acquire, through study and practice."

Whenever a business fails, if the truth be told, this is 90%, of the reason for the failure.
Unfortunately many people never even realise that this is their problem. They might even get angry, if you suggest that this is the problem.
You can only solve a problem, when you realise that there is a problem.... For those who do not accept they could have such a problem, this is not for you. I'm talking to people who want to turn their businesses, no matter how small they are today, into big, big, global companies...like Walmart or Apple.

In my next post, I want to start giving you some simple but practical principles on how to acquire the skills, necessary to build, and manage an organization. This is a huge subject, so you must be patient.

To be continued.

23/05/2023

An important lesson in how to successfully “pivot” your business
__The Cassava Technologies case study

When I used to blog regularly on this platform, I gave you some insights on how to "pivot" your business to take advantage of new technologies and developments. As I have always said, I prefer to talking about things that I have done in my 37 year business career rather than what I have heard about.

Pivoting is what you do standing on a solid platform and lean over or stretch out of what you normally do. I don’t really like to stray outside my core area of skills which rely on my understanding of engineering, which is why I don’t spread out into areas like mining or agriculture unless it is to service those areas with my own skills.

For several years, I had been mulling over the idea and doing deep studies before I made the move to launch a company called Cassava Technologies (which we refer to as "CassTech").

I wanted a company that could harness the powerful new emerging technologies like cloud computer storage, cyber security, Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the renewable energies needed to make them happen in a climate change threatened world.

I tapped a new group of talented people from within the our existing telecoms businesses as well as many from outside who knew the new industries well, or at least better than I did. Together with this new leadership, we scoped out what we wanted to do, and what we could not do.

__“We must focus on not only where we want to play, but where we can win, if we play. I might want to play basketball, but it will be hard if I’m only 5’7”, and can only kick a ball,” I would always remind my people.

You will see what we defined as our focus areas by visiting our website: https://www.cassavatechnologies.com/

Many of these things we had already begun to do with our telecom business but needed more priority and strategic focus. We knew we would need to raise capital of up to $1bn to realize our business strategy, and we knew that kind of money requires that you should not only have a clear vision and demonstrable ability to attract it.

After developing our Business Plan and practicing our presentations for months, we hit the road to make pitches to investors in London, Paris, New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Johannesburg and Cape Town.

Even when Covid hit, we did not stop, often doing several pitches a day online. A lot of investors actually turned us away but we continued to hammer away, using each refusal as an opportunity to fine tune or change our tactics but not the strategy itself.

Soon the money began to come in and we stepped up our efforts to scale what we had started. Eventually we raised all the money that we could, and turned our attention to building and even buying businesses to bolt onto our strategic objectives. [I led this initiative during the time I was also leading the African effort dealing with the Covid crisis].

Cassava Technologies is now a thriving business far bigger than our telecoms businesses and operates across 47 countries globally including operations, investments, and offices in the Middle East, India, Europe, the US and Latin America, with more than 5,000 employees.

CassTech operates in 31 African countries and services businesses both large and small [it is strictly B2B, and does not provide consumer services (B2C) but helps those who do].

We are still taking in new capital (you never stop!) but our valuations have soared, and we expect to double them by the time we go to the Public Markets [IPO] when we feel we are ready and the market conditions are right.

__Now read this blog carefully several times with a pen and notebook and try to list some of the core principals of entrepreneurship that I taught you. They are all there, and they apply to a start-up of any size. After you finish that homework, also let me know how you are and what you're up to: Businesses launched and scaled? Courses studied? Books read?

I will ask my team to look at your comments, and will reply to those of you who show that you have studied the lessons of our entrepreneurial school of nine years.

Remember what I've said often here: “The eagle is the only bird that looks for an opportunity during a storm”, and “The elephant does complain about the weight of its tusks (better read for you and me as “tasks”!)

Finally, “A good entrepreneur does not fight the conditions but learns to fight in the conditions”.

All the best.

Unfortunately, this does not mark a return to my regular blogging but the Buffalo Hunter will return from time to time to check on you!