Taste is a big deal

Often, I experience satisfaction whenever I eat egusi soup prepared by people of Ijebu in south west of Nigeria. That soup is sweet, nutritious and has a message for entrepreneurs. The soup is prepared with a mix of blended seeds of melon, palm oil, pepper and spices. Once it is set on fire the aroma excite your senses but tasteless until addition of salt at boiling point.

In my thinking, these mixed ingredients do have right to “complain” that the soup is tasteless but the moment salt “complains” that the soup is tasteless then hope is lost. Why?  This is because the core role of salt is to give taste.

Dear friend, just as it is worrisome for salt to complain that soup is tasteless so is it worrisome for entrepreneurs to complain that their community economy is poor. The poverty in the land is the call to opportunity for every entrepreneur.

As an entrepreneur, you are the salt of your community. Live above fear and add taste to it.

I think we should remind ourselves the implication of fear. Fear creates double problems. It prolongs problems confronting the society due to inaction and enhances negative emotion in the person.

Fear delays progress for people and society. The opposite of fear is faith and it means executive courage in imperfect conditions. Taking action in hope of positive outcome is a critical factor for any budding entrepreneur who desires success.

In the year 1999, the first company I worked with as a volunteer, prior to my university education, had a managing director who desire to meet a client but could not secure an appointment with him. The moment I joined the work team and the managing director mentioned it, I proposed we visit the client, a public figure. We summoned courage, although not on appointment, and we sealed a deal that compared to total annual turnover of the company previous year. In any enterprise, it is the executive actions that improve wealth and not the fear.

Plans and dreams of an entrepreneur will remain passive without courageous steps. An entrepreneur is an executive and not a mere dreamer. Although it is impossible to be an entrepreneur without a dream but action makes dream come true. The chief executive officer is the person who releases accessible values to the consumers, and create wealth for the company. This means you are the chief among workers taking actions to solve problems, create values, and enjoy the reward of your actions.

To succeed, an entrepreneur must be an executive. An executive is not just a person with well-tailored suits seated on brown polished mahogany chair and table. An executive is someone with dreams for better society, who plans her services and products development, daily building relationship and communicating, and executes the plans along with her team. An effective executive gets the right thing done with fulfilling reward.

Dear budding entrepreneur, this is the best time to review and act on your business plan. Live above the fear and step out in courage to give taste to the corporate effort. Step in actively; make our society sweet and interesting for all of us. Empower your mental model now to be the taste that consumers and everybody in the community clamour for. Leverage on these two paradigm for valuable mental model.

These are salt paradigm and light paradigm.

Salt paradigm: In our part of the world, we appreciate salt for its role as a flavouring agent and food preservative. Humans have used salt to preserve food for many years, but salt also plays other roles in food we eat. Salt is an essential nutrient; it provides texture and enhance food colour.

Likewise, as a budding entrepreneur your business is about preserving local economy. Your acts keep the economy from depression. An entrepreneur simply gives flavour to humanity.

The same way that salt counter act bitterness, an entrepreneur counter act the bitterness of joblessness in our society. Be the salt of our community.

Light paradigm: One of the key attributes of light is that it enhances flow of activity. It is a source of energy for productivity.

Along this thinking, an entrepreneur build business and it enhances flows of economic activity. That business becomes a source of energy for workers who have passion to contribute towards development of the society. The potential of an average worker for responsibility becomes empowered as they show up to work and have opportunity to earn money. As an entrepreneur, when you employ you enhance orderliness within the society.

You are a light of our business world.  Please have this at the back of your mind and let it keep you in business.

My encouragement is that you step out to act on the business dream. There is more you contribute to our society every time you open the workshop, office and distribute the product than make money. Your action to grow the company, gives hope to prospective employees, keeps investors’ confidence high, attracts people to our economy, and putting smile on the faces of many families. Your action is like a taste of salt and it is a big deal to us all.

 

Victor Mamora