In 2014, my wife and I walked into a popular restaurant on Victoria Island in Lagos, Nigeria, and it was buzzing with activities. The servers moved briskly across the tables, collecting orders, noting them on small notepads, and routing the orders to the kitchen—no sophisticated technologies. The restaurant was not short of customers, as we lined the seats of this very well-run restaurant, waiting in anticipation for our orders to be fulfilled. I keenly observed this beautiful work of art! I wanted to understand what was causing this restaurant to work so effortlessly well. While several reasons could have contributed to it, there was one observation that I made that day. The Lebanese owner of the restaurant was sitting there with his business, supervising, and overseeing cash collection.
Fast-forward to 2017, I walked into a new supermarket in Lekki, also in Lagos, Nigeria, with other entertainment features. Intrigued by the integration of entertainment with retail, I asked about the owner. I was not surprised when I was told she was out of the country. I smiled and left. I have been to that supermarket several times, and not once have I seen the owner. Probably my bad timing. The supermarket is housed in a building with other business amenities, and I can tell you that some of those amenities have been run down in such a short time. There was a remarkable contrast between these two businesses.
Several people wonder why some foreign entrepreneurs run more successful businesses in Africa while several local companies struggle to stay afloat. Well, there you go! Maybe the data might be skewed somewhat because foreigners who left their countries to start a business in another country are already ahead of the pack in terms of drive, grit, and conscientiousness – all traits of successful entrepreneurs. But it also creates a sample size of successful entrepreneurs from which we can learn a thing or two. These entrepreneurs stay with their businesses. They are present even when they have made more money than you can imagine. They do not outgrow their company until the value is maximised, at which point they sell or exit in some form or fashion. As simple as this sounds, it isn’t easy to find present entrepreneurs. Go downtown in Accra, Kigali, or Lagos, and run that experiment yourself. Walk into restaurants, retail outlets, and gaming centres, and ask for the owner. If I get a dollar every time you hear that they are not around, I would be competing with Elon Musk right now. Walking into a production facility, private school, or pharmacy store would not be much different.
Staying with your business does not necessarily mean being in the office 24/7. Staying in your business means that you are available for the business and not merely being reported to about the business. It means spending time on the production floor and speaking to the supervisors and engineers. It means going to the stores, supermarkets, and retail outlets, observing product movement, new entrants, and pains of the retail owners, speaking to customers, and understanding their buying criteria. It means meeting your distributors frequently in the board room and over dinner or drinks. It means posing as a customer to your competitors to learn what they do better than you and implement it in your business. It means playing the role of your employees to understand how to make them more effective. In 2021, the founder of Deliveroo – a British online food delivery company valued at over U$10 billion – Will Shu posed as a delivery man in London to see how the business operates. One of his observations was how rude the restaurant staff were to his employees. He was on the receiving end of some of those condescending remarks. Staying with your business will ensure that you understand your customers and their evolving characteristics, endear you to your staff – one of the most powerful motivational tools for employees – and help you find and replicate great ideas. Today is a good time to get back into your business – you’ve been out for too long!
I am the author of Scaling for Success: Empowering African SMEs. I am a Partner at Sahel Capital, a food and agriculture-focused private investment firm in Sub-Saharan Africa. Sahel Capital manages the Fund for Agriculture Financing in Nigeria (FAFIN) and the Social Enterprise Fund for Agriculture in Africa (SEFAA).
I co-lead SEFAA, an impact-first fund investing in agribusinesses that provide direct or indirect benefits to smallholder farmers across 13 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. I also lead investments and portfolio management for SEFAA and manage FAFIN portfolios, two of which were recently exited. I am a director on the board of one of the portfolio companies and serve in advisory roles for several startups and SMEs.