 Now, categorizing the problems and growth patterns of businesses in a systematic way that is useful to entrepreneurs seems at the first glance a hopeless tax. Now, small businesses vary widely in size and capacity for growth. They are characterized by independence of action, different organizational structures and varied management styles. Are you seeking to grow your business? If so, what are the pertinent questions you should answer? Find out as we explore all of that on the show today. Welcome to Business Insight and Plus TV Africa. I am Justin Akadoni. Now, the Lagos Economic Summit, tagged in Egberti, most have come and gone, but the highlight was still Lingere, as the state government presented a 30-year plan at the event. Now, the government also received formal approval for the construction of the Lecky Egbert Airport. It also presented two major bills that will enhance the ease of doing business in the state. Take a look. This is the closing ceremony of the ninth edition of the Lagos Economic Summit, tagged in Egberti, 2022. The 30-year master plan articulates initiatives that will drive Lagos ambition to become Africa's model mega-city. The day is also auspicious as the governor signs two important bills that enhance the ease of doing business in Lagos and in keeping with the state's mega-city plan. Mr. Governor, please, can we also have a formal picture taken with the Attorney General, the Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget? Governor Somolo explains that the Lagos wealth fund bill signaled the commencement of the state's sub-suburban green bond that will create sustainable wealth to government and rest it. These will also prevent Lagos revenue from external shock while making the state the technology and investment hub. On the launch of the Lagos 30-year development plan, the governor says government will continue to pursue policies that are inclusive and equitable to all over the period. In the last two days, what the summit has shown to us is the audacity, which was the words that all the youths that had a privilege to have led and moderated yesterday, what they all said about Lagos, their explanation and their expectations of Lagos. That indeed Lagos is about the audacity of hope. It's about ensuring that each time you fall, you must get up again. There is a 70 trillionaire requirements to deliver on the plan to make Lagos a trillion dollar economy in 30 years. More than 70% of that is expected to come from all the sources than the government's pockets. Part of what we talked about were many low-hanging fruits, including establishing an international finance center to help address some of these challenges of attracting investment. But the fact that Lagos considers its domestic investors extremely important. The funding for most of the things that are really important in Nigeria sometimes comes from the local financial sector. For example, the funding of the power sector and for us, the funding of our rail lines came from the local banks. And so for us, we're looking for investment, but we want investment, not just from foreign investment, not just from foreign investors, but also from local investors. So this discussion was really talking about that and getting ideas from different stakeholders. It was quite a gift to have this kind of panel, right? You had a panel that had an economist, an established economist, that could sort of bring the perspective of pragmatic, but also academic perspective. You had financiers who can talk about what the private sector needs as well, whether that's from the infrastructure side or just general private sector role. You had the civil servants as well, represented by the special advisor on SDG and investments, as well as Honourable Yishio from the Legislator. Someone who also witnessed the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the state government and Delioc Group for Lagos Film City, as well as the MOU between the state government and Siemens Energy for Electronics Technician Trading. On stage, the COO Delioc Group. Welcome back. That was some of the highlights from the last Lagos Economic Summit Group, which happened not too long ago. And now to the business of the day. Asking the right questions can help you find the information you seek. It is essential to ask specific questions as you likely want a specific answer. Additionally, learning how to ask the right questions is important in the developing effective communications skills. I'm now being joined by Ezekiel Schuler, C.S. Serial Entrepreneur and CEO of Alimza Asimbo, as he shares useful insight on questions entrepreneurs most answer for business growth in today's economy. Many thanks for joining us, Ezekiel, on the show. Thank you so much for having me, too. Yes. Before we came on, we had a free chat. I will talk about growth. You mentioned that then growth is relative. It could be positive or negative as it were. You gave an illusion of cancer. Let's talk about business growth right now. For most entrepreneurs, what should growth really look like? First things, most entrepreneurs, when they think about growth, they think about more money. What they really think about is revenue growth. More money is coming into the business. Yes, that's part of growth, but growth is a lot more than that. It's about what the business is, what the business represents, how the business is expanding its influence within the environment that it is. I tell people that growth itself, revenue growth is neutral. It doesn't tell that you're good or bad. There are people that have grown their revenue and gotten into big trouble and then had to go out of business. I tell people business health is the main focus. Because if a baby is healthy, the baby would grow. Sometimes the baby is growing, it doesn't mean the baby is healthy. But if the baby is healthy, the baby would grow. As entrepreneurs, we must put a little bit more priority on not just that we are growing, but how are we growing? How healthily are we growing? Exactly. How healthily are we growing? Basically, when I introduced the show, we talked about parenting and questions to be asked. You have talked about growth and specifically organic growth in the healthy terms. What are these questions that you should be asking if you really want to grow? Okay, so the first thing that I... I have this session that I have with entrepreneurs, and the first thing that I always tell people is, as an entrepreneur, when you think about growth, are you walking to grow a business that would represent the dreams of the people that work for you? Now, let me explain. Most entrepreneurs, when we think about growth, the picture that we see is just us, in big car, big house and the likes. But the problem is that you have people that work with you and they see you. If the growth in the business cannot help them at least, provide for them the kind of lifestyle that you live at the very least. They're going to work with you until they find something else and live. So, Reb, if I got you clearly, I'm sorry to just brought you in now. So, if you're factoring in growth, it shouldn't just be just you organization and its entirety, but the manpower will actually provide these services. Yes, because those are the people, if you have people that stay with you and grow with you, it's a lot more cheaper to grow people through your ranks than to hire people at different levels. And even a lot less riskier if you have good quality people in-house. So, as an entrepreneur, you must think about growth, not just in terms of your personal success or the size of the organization, but in terms of the people that you are bringing along with you to make sure that as we're growing this business, if somebody says to themselves that I'm going to be as valuable to this organization as ever, does the organization have the capacity to fulfill the dreams that they have? The individual dreams. Do you understand? Because you know, people say things like, oh, you can't be rich working for somebody, but that's not true. It's who you work for. There are people like Steve Burma that I've never worked for, that has never built a business in his life, worked his entire life in an organization, and he's a billionaire. He's the top 10 billionaires in the world. So the first thing I always like to get people to do is say, don't just grow for yourself, grow for your people too. Okay, so, I haven't figured that out. I haven't answered the question of growing the people who work for you. So what else do you need to look at? Then you need to figure out these three things, right? First, you need to ask, what do we need to do to maximize revenue? Make more money, essentially. Two, what do we need to do to save more money? Because it doesn't matter if I made 100 billionaires, if I spent 110 billionaires trying to make that money. Because ultimately, it's not how much money you make, it's how much money you keep that matters. And the third is, what are we going to consistently do to improve the quality of our products, our service, and our brand? In fact, I always say this, that if you have people that work in your organization and including yourself, the entrepreneur, every single day, we must think about the activities that we've done and trace them to these three things. The ability, because it's essentially what is called the strategic objective of any business. Make more money, save more money, improve the quality of product, service, or brand. So if you think about making more money, the question here would be, what we're doing at the size at which we are, can we do more? Can we go out? Can we build a bigger business? Can we invest a bit more money marketing and sell a lot more? Secondly, in the case of saving more money, are we spending too much? Can we, so for example, in terms of saving more money, sometimes for a manufacturing business, in my mind, should we buy more of a certain chemical so that we can get a lesser price? Should we buy more of a certain, exactly benefit of large scale? Instead of buying things in small, because we might realize that by buying things little by little, we're losing a lot of money long term. So sometimes in, as an organization, it could be, should we train our people so that their capacity is increased? If I have a junior developer, should I train him or should I go and hire a senior developer? So those are things, and then lastly is... And before we get to the last one, Izzy, you talked about Brandy, but I just wanted to find out that, for entrepreneurs, are there like some specifics as per when to know if it's making more money you want or if you want to improve, or maybe saving more money, right? So I think that at every point in time, our eyes must be on all three, right? Because at every point in time, a business always has a need to make more money. At every point in time, a business always has a need to save more money, right? At every point in time, a business must always improve the quality of this brand or the product or service, meaning that they want to improve what they mean to the customer. So again, these three things are, essentially things that we always have to review on a day-to-day basis, week-to-week basis, and relax. All right, you then quite stay on them, the improving of brand and their quality of product. What are the things to really look at, essentially? Yeah, so first is to constantly review what we are offering our customer. Because ultimately, the customer is changing. I give an illustration of a bread company and people saying, oh, that bread, they've reduced their hand. And it's not as if the bread changed their formulation, they just didn't improve it. So as much as possible, we must always look, excellence is improving on the best that we did last time. So as a business, we must always work to improve. Are we trying to do better? Are we improving our processes? If we did this this way, can we do it better next time? And can we show the customer that we're doing better? And then also, as a business, are we showing up in the right places? For example, if you know your target audience to improve your brand equity, you might need to show up in certain places so that and invest, invest your money in certain places. Sometimes they might need to come here and pay some money, do some ads, so that certain kinds of people will see that. They need to make themselves known. Exactly. They need all their credit, the TV appearances as well. Sometimes the miracle you're looking for is in somebody watching you on TV and saying, oh, that person is the kind of person that I want to do business with. So your presence and your image have to be felt. Oh, they have to. I mean, ultimately, because, so one of my mentors tells me that God looks at the heart, but it's only God. Everybody else looks at outward appearance. What the hearts mean. Exactly. So if you're really good, don't just be good inside. Sure. People need to know what she's good. Yeah, because what's a brand? A brand is what people think about you. Really. A brand is what people think about you. If I walk into this room, if I drive into this place in a Lamborghini, your perception of me would be very different. I might not have a house, but if I borrowed a Lamborghini and I drove into this place and I said, I want to see the MD. I'll see the MD. So once people see you, so as a business, we must always put our best foot forward. It means that your product meets people before you meet them is to have the best packaging. Your process is the person who calls the customers, meets people verbally before they meet them. They should be properly trained so that they can always answer properly. Oh, fine. Another question of whether you need to make money, save more money, improve branding and product and services, what are the questions you should be asking? So if you then want to grow your business, and this area is a bit touchy for most Nigerians in particular, if you then want to grow your business, then you must consider that ultimately, at some point in your growth journey, you would have to bring in partners. Oh, okay. Yeah, because you'd have to bring in partners. And it's one part in this country that we haven't figured out. Most people want to be their own bosses. They don't have to solve everything by themselves. Yes, and we also want to have ultimate control in our business. And oftentimes, if you want to go alone, if you want to go fast, you can go alone. If you want to go far, you might need to go with the company. So if you then want to bring in partners, you need to think, what would make my business attractive for somebody to say, I'd like to buy into it so that we can expand it? And there are four quick things that I'd like to mention. The first thing is that your business, the technical ability, whatever is your business supposed to be doing, do you do it the best way possible? That's one. Two is brand it again. Do you, when people see you, do they see you as the best way possible that you are? Three, do you keep enough information? Do you have data about your business? Do you know who's buying, where they're buying, where they're buying, how they're buying, when they're buying? Do you know all of those, right? Because if you know that, you can reproduce success. And lastly, do you have processes? Is there a defined way of how business is done? Is there a way manufacturing is done? Is there a way sales is done? Is there a way we find out? Because in business, it doesn't really matter what works. It only matters what duplicates. Okay, because I'm going to follow up on that. I talked about processes. Most people just believe they know how they go about things, about time they've been doing it, but they're not really like deliberate about them, how they started from point A to point B to point C. So what's the essence of them having, maybe having them reading down? So either or another person can actually manage it. So if you don't have processes, what happens is that the entrepreneur is trapped. We all start business because we want to be free, but without processes, you have to keep coming down to do something that you used to do that somebody is now doing, but the business has left. But imagine if there are processes, and I tell you, you don't need a consultant for this. Find, call the people that do different things in your office and ask them to write what they do down. They write what they do down, you look at it to confirm that what they say they do is what you're hoping that they're doing. And that's a process document right there. It's not rocket science, right? Once you put all that together, put it together, that's a process document. Oh, I mop the floor. This is how I mop it. Oh, I manufacture soap. I pour X of this, X of Y, X of Z, and this is how I do it. And once you can put all that together, you have a process document. So the next time somebody comes in and is new, you shut in the person's learning curve. You make it easier for the person to catch on very quickly. But there is a standard on the process to follow. Exactly, there's something to follow. Let's stay with some data, bring it in partnership for one minute because that's where it gets a bit delicate for most people. They feel like their businesses or their business is their priced possession. They wouldn't want to lose control as it were. But at what point do you really need to get in more partners? So at the point that you need more partners is the point where you see your business going bigger than the resources that you have. But do they have to be actively involved in the business, the partners? It depends on what you want. And it also depends on the kind of investment you're looking for. I mean, some people get partners that are not actively involved. But whether they're actively or not, what most Nigerians don't want is that they don't want to be accountable. Right? They want to say, okay, I have 100 million, they can't spend 50 million. Even if you are the soap owner of your business, you should also be accountable. But most people aren't. Most people aren't. And they don't want partners because when you get a partner, what happens is that now you need to explain why you spend such an amount. But doesn't it make sense when you know the reason why you're spending? You can't even explain it. You can't even defend it. It makes sense. But it's easy to say. It's not that easy to have to do. It's just said and done. To be able to explain to somebody what you're doing, why you're doing it, and especially because most businesses started being bootstrapped. So we're all hustling. So we're trying to... Maggie, finish in the house now. And your own account is zero. But the business account has 50K. All right. A whole lot we have said, containing all of that, it's a whole lot to grab. I've had to jot down for a bit because these are just useful insights. But as we begin to wrap up on this conversation right now, what is the major thing? And maybe any entrepreneur is watching right now and that he is actually having a shaky business and that he wants to grow, but he doesn't really know where to turn. For instance, he's even thinking of maybe laying off stuff because he's not been able to reach the bottom line. So I think that if the easiest thing to do right now is find somebody who runs a business, maybe not your specific type of business, but the ones in bigger business than you, and then just go learn from the person. Because I can't give you blanket advice here because business is specific. If I say I will lay off your stuff, then you might lay off the good ones. If I say don't lay them off, you might keep the bad ones. But just find somebody, every single business owner I believe should at least have two or three friends that are running businesses. Maybe at their level or higher their level. So can you know what I'm having this issue? And the alternative also is that they can meet me, but I'm expensive. I will build them. But they should meet their friends. All right. Thank you so much, I'm Ezekiel. I'm sure there's he for all of the useful insights that you have shared. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time. By the way, Ezekiel Ezekiel is a serial entrepreneur and he's actually doing well in everything that he does. If I have to say so myself. As we round off today, these imparity for Nigeria to focus on sectors with great potential for inclusive development when prioritizing growth drivers. Now these were the words of foremost industrialist, Aliko Dangute, at the second Aditola Udusola Lecture organized by the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria Man. I'll leave you with details of that. I'll see you again next time. I am Justin Acadone. Many thanks for watching. Nigeria has experienced fluctuations in manufacturing output growth over the years as a result of over-dependence on crude oil revenues. Captains of industry, including the organized private sector, have converged on this whole to dialogue on changing their narrative. The United Nations says Nigeria has remained in the developing nation Kader as total exports account for 16% of GDP in 2021 and non-employment at 22.56%. Foremost industrialist, Aliko Dangute, emphasizes that no nation has ever attained developed nation status without having a thriving manufacturing sector. The experience in various parts of the world has shown that industrialization drives economic growth and development, which improves living standards as evident by the high output and per capita income in industrialized countries. Countries smaller than Nigeria, such as Singapore and South Korea, have an average per capita GDP of about 65,000 and 31,000 respectively due to the level of industrialization which they have achieved. To drive manufacturing growth in Nigeria, Dangute points the country in the direction of industry-oriented policy, adequate infrastructure, and the well-developed SME sector. The countries doing industrial performance has significantly has significant social economic implications as poverty and unemployment continues to rise. While there is a pressing need to create more jobs, the high cost of doing business in the face of declining consumer purchasing power puts enormous strain on manufacturers with many scaling down production and some of them shutting down completely. The onset of forex crisis in 2015 and the global pandemic in 2020 presented manufacturers with a difficult set of circumstances. The situation has recently been compounded by skyrocketing inflation. The situation had always had to deal with the various challenges in an economy that over the years has seen many challenges, many ups and downs. Today, the situation has improved significantly. I believe that the economy, although it is still facing low-growth situations, but at least it has remained operational and has been able to weather most of the tide. In today's world, there is no doubt that the level of industrialisation is one of the basis for determining economic developments. The manufacturing sector, therefore, acts as a catalyst that accelerates the pace of transformation and diversification of the economy, enables the country to fully utilise its endowments and to depend less on foreign supply of finished goods or raw material for its economic growth, development and sustainability. Dangoté advises the government to ensure it consorts widely with stakeholders or in taking far-reaching decisions address the speed of insecurity and invest in infrastructure among others.