It is interesting to see the number of University dropouts and the formally uneducated become glowing successes in our societies. It almost makes you think you are at an advantage when things don’t go particularly right in life. I have spoken to a few young people who think school is over emphasized and some of the biggest names globally never even finished school. And many more who look at successful persons with humble beginnings, knowing it one day soon will be them. I do find it sad because most of them seem not to realize that all of these people had a certain amount of drive that was born sometimes of pure desperation.
As weird as it may sound i truly believe that a certain hunger is required to be able succeed. A hunger that cannot be simulated. The basis for this is very simple. The minute you are in anyway comfortable with where you are, striving for more instantly ceases, and unfortunately this is the challenge a lot of small businesses have here in Ghana. The primary purpose for most business starters is to feed self and family and afford a few basics (which most will consider luxury considering that this here is a third world economy) that will give them a sense of comfort. Unfortunately these are very easily gotten when a good business idea is in motion yet not adequate or enough to ensure a growing business.
To ensure a business that will grow a few things that we need to consider before business setup and during the operation of a business.
Let’s use me as an example. a few years ago, i happened to be couching a small group of teenage entrepreneurs who succeeded in making and selling sweetened groundnuts to their colleagues at a turn over profit of over 800% over 6 months. These are the learning’s I picked working with them.
We needed to learn to take a win, celebrate it and simultaneously try to improve as a result of it. This type of balance was extraordinarily challenging for a group of young high school kids, but they demonstrated a maturity and resolve that I had never seen from a team of high school kids, or any age, really.
The secret was hunger.
They were able to stay hungry. They knew that each pack we sold was a step in the right direction, but was not itself a destination. I believe that the moment you become satisfied with where you are, your improvement ceases. If you haven’t drawn your own correlation yet, allow me to make it for you: Hungry
In my time at ehjuma (formerly Synergy Placement) I have worked with hundreds of small businesses and a great many of them have been successful. Can you guess what happens to a successful small business that makes them sputter and ultimately fail? One answer is quite simply that they lose their hunger. If your business is succeeding, congratulations; but the harsh reality is that you need to work even harder to stay ahead of your competition. When you are successful you cannot simply rely on what helped you get there to make sure you stay there – and yet so many people do!
Any successful team or organization will struggle to maintain their success if their only strategy is wash, rinse and repeat. Even the most extraordinary plans become mundane when we see it repeatedly. The truth is that the best time to take risks is when you are already succeeding.
What happens to a struggling small business that helps them turn things around and get some traction? Again, the answer is hunger. A struggling company can get things back on the right track by regaining the hunger that drove them to get into business in the first place. Small business owners have a passion I have not seen paralleled anywhere else. The challenge becomes taking this raw passion and making it last by finding ways to innovate and improve. Let this serve as a challenge to anyone reading this. Find your hunger no matter how your business is currently doing. If things are going well, great! Celebrate, but don’t lose sight of the fact that this is the absolute best time to find ways to grow and improve. If you are struggling, then this is a time to revisit what you are doing and look for ways to rebuild it or change it entirely. Reading this and nodding along quietly won’t help your business thrive; you must take action.
The ratio between those who act and those who do not is exactly the same as the ratio between those who succeed and those who do not. Remember, success is not bred by complacency. I don’t think that anyone thinks it is, but time and time again I’ve seen successful people slip into the trap of comfortable habit and all of a sudden they find themselves struggling to stay afloat. Stay hungry my friends.