5 Lessons I Learnt About Business While Growing Up

Being a co-founder of one of the world’s best cross-border shipping companies is no easy feat. Thanks to the culmination of solid and profound business advice, experience, and skills that I have garnered over the years, it has been a rewarding ride. The mistakes and failures that I have had to deal with while growing up also taught me the lessons that contributed to where I am today.

Additionally, I have realized that there are lessons to be learned everywhere and in different situations we find ourselves; looking back, I picked up more than enough lessons while growing up. These unique lessons have shaped how I do business, providing me with unique insights that I might not have been able to come across on my own.

As reported by Fundera, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics states that about 20% of U.S. small businesses fail within the first year. I believe that one of the major reasons businesses fail and how they can avoid failure is by gleaning from the experiences of other businesses and learning from their failures.

This article will explain five lessons I learned about business while growing up and how they have shaped my business orientation as a startup founder.

1. The product makes sales easy: I once had the privilege of selling bean cakes “akara” for my aunt while growing up. Obviously, she did not invent akara; however, she innovated her approach to making akara which stood her out. She realized that customers loved fluffy akara, and made hers a little bigger by adding a bit of baking powder to make it rise. This minor tweak gave her akara a unique look and taste. The product visuals made selling the product easier; I didn't have to do much convincing. This experience drove home an important lesson for me that ‘ the product makes sales easy.’ This simply means when the product meets or exceeds customers’ expectations, the efforts put into sales will be more rewarding.? If the product is good and it is something that your target audience is willing and able to pay for, then getting them to buy from you shouldn’t take much effort. It reiterates that while we invest so much in marketing and sales, we need to ensure that the product itself is superb.
2. You can’t do without hustle and grit: My grandfather was a farmer, palm wine tapper, and palm oil seller. Seeing this man get up every day before daybreak to get his work started was impressive. Well, it was impressive until I became of age to join him. While I remember those days fondly now, it was anything but fun back then. The evenings before, he would go around the village buying palm oil from the villagers. In the morning, we would wake up early to warm up the oil and fill up the oil tins and load his Yamaha motorbike for him to take to town. We repeated this activity almost every day. Whenever we didn't work on the farm, we had to spend the whole day planting, weeding, or harvesting. This taught me hustle and grit. The problem some of us face is that we want to appear like we are doing the work when we are not doing the work. I watched my grandfather take palm oil to market every day, and this reminded me that nothing could replace doing the work. You must get down to it and get the work done. Branding and packaging are good, but you must do the work.
3. Business is just more than a product: Yes, building a great product is great, but a great product alone does not build a business. To build a sustainable business, you have to think beyond the product. I watched how my father's business center struggled even with the best equipment in town. Back in the ’90s when computers were still new in Nigeria, his business center on Western Avenue had the best HP computers with top-of-the-class Xerox copiers and automatic typewriters. Despite having the best equipment in the area, we hardly saw any business. Other aspects for the business to grow were lacking. We built it and expected them to come; however, they did not come. We did not reach out to the businesses around to tell them what we do. We did not position our products well in the market. We did not hire highly talented individuals to run the business. This, among other things, caused the business to fail. You can have the best tech tools in your niche, but if you don’t consciously work on other aspects of your business, then you still have a long way to go. Work on your innovation pipeline, your customer service, your branding, and so much more. At the end of the day, a great business can marry all of these together and not just focus on one aspect.
4. Building a business is not synonymous with building a company: When we started Heroshe, we met a nice fellow who wanted to invest in the business early on. He asked me a simple question, “If I fund your business today, what will you do next with the money?”. I responded, “I will travel down to where my customers are and spend time talking with them to understand their pains deeply so we can learn how to solve them well.” You can already tell that this did not go down well with him. He was furious with my response. He thought that that would be a complete waste of his money, and it was the end of the deal. That didn't stop us. It was our goal to get to know the customer. Only in this way could we build the right products for them. One of the mistakes startup founders make is that they are so focused on the next sale rather than focusing on building a sustainable relationship with their customers. I learned that there is a difference between building a business and building a company - I saw many businesses fail because they were focused on making money and NOT helping the customer solve their problems. We often forget that when we have a great relationship with our customers, they tend to utilize one of the most powerful advertising tools ever - word of mouth, to bring us more businesses. We experienced this word of mouth phenomenon, and it was our growth lever for a while.?
5. Business is about solving your customer’s needs in the most efficient way: We started Heroshe simply because an aunt wanted to procure wares for her boutique. She did not know how to get quality products in the US. She reached out to us, and we helped her. She went on to tell other people, and other people told other people - you get the gist. In talking to these customers, we realized they had three major problems: Logistics, Access, and Payment to procure inventory from the US. We zeroed in on these problems and began to break them down and solve them bit by bit. Initially, it all started manually, as we all learned, “do things that don’t scale.”. We knew, however, that we needed to streamline processes with technology quickly. We knew the most important thing was to solve their needs first before making the process efficient. This can be painful and costly; however, we were determined to solve this problem. We iterated with so many solution permutations until we landed on the one that worked, which we are currently using today. You don’t build a business and then find customers for such a business. You identify a need that customers are willing to pay for and then create a solution to help them solve it in the most efficient way possible. I learned that business is ultimately about finding out the customer’s need and solving that need in the most efficient way. Doing this helps you avoid producing things that your ideal audience doesn’t want. One of the ways to ensure you know your customers’ needs is by constantly talking to your customers. Don’t stop talking to your customers even after you think you have a product-market fit.

If you were to mention some lessons you picked up while growing up, what would they be? Please drop your comments below.