40+FAB Blog

Every once in a while, we experience a season of great abundance where we have more than enough. 

What is your attitude in that season? Do you use more, spend more, relax more and enjoy the season?

In agriculture, there are two seasons – planting and harvest. Growing up in Africa, I was used to the farm and the preparation for planting was hard work. This was always called out as the work that needed to be done, and it is important work because if you don’t sow, you will not reap. However, the harvest season actually requires many times more work than planting.

There is abundance at harvest that needs to be gathered, cleaned, sorted, stored and sold. It’s not enough to eat and enjoy the produce of harvest, it must be administered correctly as a part of it will give you seed for the next planting season.

When you get into any season of abundance, don’t switch off and relax, you actually need to put in more work to correctly administer your abundance against the next season of your life.

Remember there are many days of waiting between planting and harvest. How you handled your abundance in the last season will determine how well you survive the waiting period when nothing much seems to be happening.

40+FAB Blog

I was never a fan of homework as a youngster. It felt like my freedom from school was being sucked out by the work to be done. My parents would not let me catch a break until my work was done.

Succumbing to the discipline of homework proved to be useful in Uni. There was no one standing over me to get it done, but taking the personal responsibility to do it contributed to my overall assessments and this was crucial to my final grade.

The practice of homework was not meant to end at graduation. There is a need for personal research and finding out information about what you are faced with in life on a daily basis. The discipline of doing personal research to complete tasks goes a long way in ensuring you have a better outcome for all your decisions.

Homework is needed on the job, for personal investments, purchases, relationships, raising children and so on.

Do you know of anyone who has made bad choices on investment, purchases or relationships?
I read of a guy who was suing his wife because she was born a man and he never knew about this. I wonder what due diligence he did before getting married.

If you were to get a big investment from the bank to buy a house, a car or to invest in your business, the banks will let you know that they will carry out searches on you, and they will ask you loads of questions before they make their decision to grant the loan. Many other businesses will do the same.

So, why should you spend a significant amount of your time, money, emotions and strength on any venture that you have not done your homework on?
If you are going to give away your valuables, then be like the banks and do some searches to ensure you are making a wise investment. 

40+FAB Blog

I cannot over emphasise the importance of preparation, however we must be careful not to fall into the trap of analysis paralysis disguised as preparation.
There is no way one can be prepared for every eventuality in any venture that is taken. Preparation should not just be an action, it should be a state of mind.

I started a training business some years back after many months of preparation. Once it started, the feedback from the first training session did more for structuring future sessions than the many months of planning. 

When a car is taken for a service, the engineer always starts the car and listens to the engine or plugs in the diagnostic kit. After it has run for a while, they are able to detect the parts of the vehicle that need to be tweaked. 

Starting is essential to tackle a whole new set of challenges that you need to overcome to get to your goal. So what are you waiting for? Do something to start your journey to that destination you desire. Nothing significant will happen until you start.

40+FAB Blog

From time to time, we might be asked for a recommendation in an area that we have absolutely no clue about or we may even be the ones asking.

I remember as a teenager being asked by an older friend from out of town where to hire sound equipment for a wedding party. I had never hired such before and had absolutely no clue, so I took him to the middle of a market in Ikeja, a town in Lagos Nigeria, close to where the Afrobeat legend Fela used to play his gigs. I pointed at a shop which looked like they had sound equipment.
We got offered everything else from drinks to drugs by some very dodgy characters in that shop, let’s just say we were very lucky not to get duped or worse. I was absolutely relieved when we got out of there in one piece. 

Have you heard about the 6 degrees of separation? This is the idea that all people are six, or fewer, social connections away from each other. This is also known as the 6 handshakes rule. So based on this rule, you know a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend that knows the president of the United States. Somewhere in your connections, you can reach anybody in this world that is able to do what you ask.

Had I known this rule at the time, I would have called on a friend who knew more about gigs to help us out and saved myself a very unsavoury experience.
I have had the privilege since then of meeting some world famous footballers, Hollywood actors and politicians based on this rule.

The next time you get asked for a recommendation or you need one, don’t just throw your hands up and say I don’t know where to begin, the reality is you do know someone who can. 

40+FAB Blog

It is hard to sum up the totality of who any human being is because we are such complex individuals. However, behavioural scientist tell us that we are likely to make a judgment on who a person is in the first 7 seconds of our meeting them. Those first impressions they say,  form a frame of reference with which we will deal with that individual going forward.

People are accepted or rejected for things like a job, relationship and much more on the basis of 7 seconds. 

This doesn’t seem like a fair assessment that we are all subjected to. So what must one do to project a good representation of themselves in 7 seconds?
To answer that question, you need to know what you are about.

Do you know yourself well? Strengths, weaknesses, passions, desires, interests, attitudes, values etc. How do all your qualities fit together to support what you consider your life’s mission?

Is your mission so clear and internalised that you can express it with conviction whenever you are scrutinised? 

Can you express what you are about in 7 seconds?

There are 3 key areas that are judged in the 7 seconds.
1. Your appearance – how you dress
2. Your body language – how you carry yourself 
3. Your speech – how you communicate 

Someone who has a primary mission to help the poor will dress in a modest way, think Mother Theresa. This will be different from someone who wants to be a pop star, think Beyoncé. Their carriage and language will also reflect it. 

Practice how to represent who you are in appearance, demeanour and conversation. Keep doing this until you are able to crystallise and summarise what you are about in 7 seconds.

40+FAB Blog

I recently watched the interview of a football manager who was asked about the game he had to play against the top team in his league. His answers were so lifeless and impotent, giving off a sense of not being good enough to win, such that I had to ask within myself, “If you don’t have any belief in winning, why are you even bothering to participate?” Needless to say, they lost that game very badly.

I then wondered if my attitude to life was like that manager. It made me strengthen my resolve to do the following things often.

If I am not prepared, then I will do what it takes to get ready in advance of opportunities I expect, dropping all excuses as to why I am not able.

If I do not know, then I will make every effort to find it out or reach out to someone who does know so I can perform better.

If my expectations seem unrealistic, then I will reevaluate my abilities on the basis of my best past performances and challenge myself to stretch beyond that.

If my confidence is low, then I will take encouragement from the fact that there is no one else in the world exactly like me and therefore there is one thing I do best that no one else can.

If I have made the right preparations, gained the right knowledge, set realistic expectations and fortified my confidence, then I have every right to go out there and give it my best shot and I do expect to win in one way or another.

40+FAB Blog

Everyone gets excited at the turn of a new year and it feels like a huge magical reset button gets activated. There is some kind of a freshness released as we get back into daily life with an extra impetus to give it our best shot. Some will set goals, others will make resolutions and the race to the end of the year will begin. 
Many have described the year 2020 as the year of 2020 vision. This sounds great and should translate into some epic things happening with much ground breaking progress being made.

In light of the expectation of a new year being a better one, have you really made much progress in the last few years or are you just repeating the same cycle? I know from my own journey that I had many years of repeating the same cycle of excitement, hope, hard work, disappointment and little progress to show for it. 
Something had to change and I found it.

2020 vision speaks of great clarity, of seeing ahead and achieving much with that insight, the term being borrowed from the eye specialists description of perfect vision. But, the saying “hindsight is 2020 vision” comes to mind. No one can really see the future, but based on what has happened in the past we can more accurately predict better outcomes for the future informed by better decisions. From a technology perspective this decade has been marked as one that will see the greatest success coming from the exploitation of data. Companies will be using software to analyse the past (data) to predict what actions will make them most profit.

This is what I found – look back at successes, look back at failures, not just my own but that of others. As I began to look at what worked for me and what didn’t, what worked for others and what didn’t, this gave me a good sense of the things I needed to change to ensure my new year ended better than the last year. Remember, it is insanity to keep doing the same things and expect a different result.

Keeping this simple practice at the centre of your mode of operation will ensure that every new year will deliver to you 2020 vision.

40+FAB Blog

We all have the story that we want to be out there in the public space – front story,  and those that we do not – back story. Sometimes we allow external pressures to craft our front story such that it becomes a combination of a little reality and a little fantasy to portray a larger than life image of ourselves.

Social media has not helped this predicament as it has even made it a lot easier to script and act out our perfect front story. It’s ok to have a front story and we all should, but your front story should never be bigger than your back story.

Spend time and invest in yourself and who you are rather than who you want people to think you are. It is most rewarding to build up your private life so robustly that you have more stories to tell than you can manage to put out there. Enjoy your life, your family, your work, your friends, your meal, that concert, that party, that holiday and much more. Let someone else worry about the pictures and the perfect story to tell. 

Remember, those nearest and dearest to you will remember you for the back stories – what really happened and not what made it out the front door.
It is my wish for you that in the coming year it will be filled with a bigger and better back story than your front story.

40+FAB Blog

I was reminded today again that the customer is king. Sometimes we come up with we think is a very good idea or product, to us at least. The reality is that what we consider to be best sometimes may be a little bit more than what our potential customers are ready to receive.

In the 70’s if you had told a phone subscriber that being totally wireless and mobile with a phone was possible, they would have laughed and said, yes it is in the Sci-Fi movie. Have you noticed that a lot of technology we use now was somehow introduced in a movie years ago?

People adopt change better when it is introduced in phases. Successful product companies do a lot of market research, they test prototypes with users, get feedback and then improve products gradually until the product resonates with the customer.

Knowing your customer is very fundamental to growing a successful enterprise. Don’t be too far off to know what the customer thinks, then use that info to refine your ideas or products into something that they will be willing to pay for.

40+FAB Blog

In these days of abundance of information and self-help everything, we sometimes forget that there is a reason why certain providers of service are good at what they do. I am sure you have caught yourself checking up some health websites just before going to see your doctor, or even while you are at their practice.

My sons iPad screen recently got broken and my wife and I decided we would not spend a dime with a repair shop to fix it because we found the material to replace the screen on Amazon, and a detailed self help video on YouTube. I attempted to replace the screen and it must have taken me about a quarter of a day trying out what I saw in the video but I got no where with it. I abandoned the project and the device sat on my shelf for about 3 months. I then picked it up again over the Christmas holiday after much persuasion from my wife and son. Again it took me a few hours but this time I managed to get it done!
It looked perfect and as I snapped the last piece into place I heard a small crack, I had broken the new screen in the very bottom corner, luckily it wasn’t too bad and everything else worked perfectly.

The amount of time it took me to finally get the work done made me think if we were actually being penny wise and pound foolish. The expert would have taken a day to do it perfectly and I would have got at least a few months of a guarantee on the work they had done.

The reality of life is that one cannot be a jack of all trades as they would end up being a master of none. So the next time you are tempted to do something yourself, take a step back and think if it might be better to get the work of an expert.