Harvard Business School visits SFAN🤝🏿
Our little global company got noticed by Harvard; how to scale your career, and more.
Yesterday, October 4, 2023, was a special day as we received Kurt Piemonte and Professor Kelly, two senior executives from Harvard University Business School, at our campus as part of their Africa mission trip.
This site visit marks the next stage in a potential learning experience in 2024.
I was thrilled to share our work with the ReadyforWork digital platform with these two executives and impressed by the value they see in our pedagogy. In his remarks, Kurt said, “What a wonderful and innovative business you have built.”
Our goal for ReadyforWork is to bring together the best of edtech, academia, and employment to help entry-level job seekers and early-career professionals upskill and future-proof their careers with in-demand digital skills while helping employers create a pipeline of diverse, less-expensive emerging talent.
In August, we finalized a strategic partnership with global payments giant Visa to launch a new course called Disciplined Entrepreneurship. Get more information about that course and see how to be notified when applications open « here »
💡METAMORPHOSIS: Your Mindset, Money, Productivity, Wellbeing
Werk, werk, werk⛳︎
DYK:
The average person spends 90,000 hours working over their lifetime.
That’s 1/3rd of your life.
To put that in perspective, work takes more from your life than any other activity outside of sleeping.
So, how do you ensure your efforts are requisite for the career advancement you seek?
That’s the focus of my recent video: How to 10x your career advancement.
Have a look:
If you lead a team, you should share this video with every one of them!
Advice for SMEs on business growth & risk mitigation♨︎
Different sources have shown that 80% of African MSME businesses do not make it past their first five years of existence despite the continent having one of the highest entrepreneurial activities.
Speaking at Societe Generale’s SME training program last month, I walked the entrepreneurs through the challenges MSMEs and startups face, shedding light on the critical factors contributing to their success or failure.
Some highlighted risks include:
Unclear product or service goals
Lack of product-market fit
Growth challenges
Team burnout
Poor team alignment
Undercapitalization
Technological innovation
Governmental policy
Macroeconomic indices
So, how do you circumvent these risks?
My recommendation is to evaluate different elements of your business.
🤝🏿Look at your people. Refine your team and plug any talent gaps.
💎Rework your business model. How you make your money is more essential than how much you make.
🚀Future-proof your product. Make your business a technology business. The rhetoric “innovate or die” is more real today than ever.
“Tom-Chris, thank you isn’t enough to express our sincerest appreciation for the great work you did at the 3rd Quarter Catalyst Series Seminar. You were exceptional, enthusiastic, engaging, an expert, and incredibly able with your facilitation skills. Thank you on behalf of Société Generale Ghana's management and the HoB team. We look forward to working with you!” —Yvette Richardson, Country Manager for Home of Business(HOB)
Maybe you’re in a situation where you’re uncertain about the future.
Or maybe you feel you don’t have what it takes to live your dream.
Here’s a reminder:
Steve Jobs founded the most valuable tech company of modern civilization without knowing how to write codes.
Tony O. Elumelu took over a defunct bank and turned it into Africa's global bank (UBA Group), even though he wasn't part of the banking industry "establishment" in Nigeria then.
Gary Dahl became a millionaire from selling (worthless) Pet Rocks.
Jack Canfield's Chicken Soup for the Soul was rejected 33 times before he finally got published and sold over 500,000,000! copies in over 40 languages, with 275 varying collections worldwide.
Stephen King, a best-selling writer with over 350 million books sold and his works made into several motion pictures, was rejected 30 times before finally getting a breakthrough.
Trump never held any elected office before being President of the most powerful nation on the planet.
Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest athlete of all time, didn't earn a spot on his high school's basketball varsity team.
Before Netflix and Chill became synonymous with the perfect idea of fun and life enjoyment, Marc Randolph was constantly told that renting movies online was the stupidest idea anyone had ever heard.
Genevieve Nnaji rose above the rhetorics of Nigerian movies being about wicked stepmothers to create Netflix's first Nigerian original film. Today, a Nigerian movie, The Black Book, has claimed the world's No. 1 spot on Netflix!
So, you see, the journey may be arduous and fraught with unbelievable obstacles. But you can't give up.
Break the limits.
Live your dreams.
And refuse to settle for average!
💎Tools, Resources, & Opportunities
🧑🏽💻 What we are watching, reading, or listening to:
If you’re looking for a National Service opportunity and are good at web development, contact us via info@sfanonline.org.
That’s all I got for you this time.
I love you,
Tom-Chris