The Difference Between a Born Entrepreneur’s Eyes and Mine
How I Learned I Need to Work on my Business Mindset
The best business minds are able to see an opportunity where such vision eludes the regular mind.
I’ve tended to approve that pretty flattering remark, not least because I used to fancy myself a member of that class of minds classifiable under the business category. The feeling is akin to that feeling you get when your professor is praising an unnamed student’s performance. Then you catch yourself, haughtier than the haughtiest cat, looking around the lecture hall to confirm that everyone else has noticed (as you have) that the unnamed student is, in fact, you. Too often, the little worry with this feeling of supreme confidence is that the professor ends his monologue with the excellent student’s name — a name that isn’t yours. Do you ever notice that guy who hardly applauds when everyone else is applauding? That’s probably our guy. And his not applauding tends to be less an issue of jealousy (as he’s likely to get chided for) than an attempt at re-orienting his mind to match evident reality.
What I’m writing now is such an attempt to re-orient my thinking; not to match any academic reality, but to come to terms with the reality that my business thinking needs a kick in the backside.
This little business mindset epiphany, like many an epiphany, came through a thing of little surface significance; a text message.
It was 7:15 a.m. I had woken up and, annoyed by the prospect of being stuck at home all day (it was one of those days on which ghosts ran the streets), had decided to idle in bed. From the desk at the opposite end of the room, Enya sang about a toy soldier. She had been at it all night, serenading me with melodies loud enough to dispel the disconcerting quietness, yet serene enough to enable sweet sleep.
Then my feet finally hit the floor.
Ill-advised as I know it is (Bee makes the point pretty strongly), I’ve let myself develop the habit of reaching for my phone as soon as I step out of bed. And there’s this thing about the device that makes it a lot harder to drop it than to pick it up. Unlocking the screen, I noticed that I had forgotten to disconnect the device from the Wi-Fi network it had been connected to. The result was as to be expected; scores of messages lined up, each seeming to put itself forward like a contestant in an “I Am Important” competition.
The decision to open my chat with David first was driven by a feeling that what he had sent should be important. He seldom texted for nothing. Not that he is some kind of anti-social media worm (very far from it) or one of those perpetually serious workaholics whose every waking thought was work, work and then some more work. If anything, he’s one of the most fun persons I know. But he tends to enjoy social media fun (very much like me) when there’s a group of people throwing crazy ideas at each other. And that’s definitely a group chat thing. This, conversely, was a direct message. So, all of this was probably part of the thought process that birthed the criteria on which I chose the winner of the “I Am Important” competition.
The text (there was just one), as I had come to expect with texts from him, contained a link to a website. I hit it, chose the browser I wanted to view it in and was taken to a home tutoring website. It makes sense to send a tutor the link to a home tutoring website, especially a tutor who can go anywhere but his place of work (death lurks there, remember?) The homepage announced that the site offered tutors the opportunity to get connected to students in need. It made a point about how broad the geographical coverage of the business was, about its only dealing with parents who are willing to valorize and appreciate tutors’ efforts by paying at a premium. The usual stuff.
I loved the idea of home tutoring students whose parents — unlike most — were actually willing to pay for good work. There aren’t many things that sap a man’s energy like little pay for good work. David had done me a solid. I displayed recently used applications, chose WhatsApp and texted him my thanks before returning to check out the application procedure for prospective tutors. It’s only when I settled down to check the availability of students in my locality that I realized the website was Nigerian. With most other services, this wouldn’t have mattered. But it was home tutoring I was dealing with, and I seriously doubted that the broad geographical coverage flouted on the homepage stretched across Nigeria’s eastern border into Cameroon.
Further exploration of the website’s About Us tab confirmed my suspicion; only Lagos and Abuja were covered. Where excitement had been, there now sat disappointment. Re-displaying the previous screen, I pointed out to my good friend that the job opportunity was limited to tutors based in Nigeria. A few minutes later, he sent two texts — yeah two texts are all it took — that drove home the realization that something was off with my thinking.
“Would this work here tho?”
“If it fit work, we fit create ours in a week.”
All I had seen in the opportunity was a job — a regular paid job. That had been my first instinct. It’s true I’ve got business projects I’m working on, but I realized in that instant that I needed to step up my game, and in a major way. It dawned on me that my instinctive thinking wasn’t a business person’s; that my approach to opportunities was limiting; that I viewed things from an “E” quadrant perspective.
A person who comes from the “E” , or employee, quadrant might say:
“I am looking for a safe, secure job with good pay and excellent benefits.”
Robert Kiyosaki
I grew with parents; both of whom had government jobs. The circumstances in which they had grown had impressed on them the importance of having a steady job. Knowing their story and seeing the civil servants that they were, I grew to imbibe the instinct to go for security first (how I realized that I had developed that instinct is a story for another time). In Cameroon, having such a security-first orientation to work translates as getting a government-paid job. Perhaps I’m just giving an excuse for my failure to apply business principles I’ve been reading about for years. For someone who used to fancy himself a business mind, this excuse must be lame. If anything, more insight regarding my “business mind” might be gained from the fact of my being the sole son (and yes, there are no daughters) who decided to apply the security-first principle.
Now I know business epiphanies are a thing. Now I realize building a business mindset requires more than reading words in a book. Now I appreciate the difference between a born entrepreneur’s eyes and mine.
Man’s got work to do.
Liked this? Click on the name to read more from Arnold Ngwobela.
