Seek to make change happen!

Over the years several entrepreneurs have discussed with me the need to have an ongoing standing entrepreneur meet up in Lagos. Many times they end by saying I should lead the effort. Last week I agreed to take on the mantle and invited 30 hand picked entrepreneurs to the event. Thanks to one of my investors, Jacqueline Novogratz of Acumen, we were able to have Seth Godin speak to us via Video conference.

Seth focused his talk on 3 things all entrepreneurs should keep in mind. Here are his points and my notes from the talk:

1) You seek to make a change happen.

If you are not seeking to make change happen stop and do something else! In every conversation about your business ask the question what is it for? You have to be very clear on the change you are trying to make and most importantly, why?

2) The only way we change anyone ever is by telling them a story they believe.

Stories are based on our perceptions. What is your story? Why should I care? You need to connect with people in an authentic way.

3)You have to be small, tiny, the smallest possible organization to survive.

This one is quite ironic, but when you are small you can identify the issues. BUT there has to be scale — If you can’t touch 10m people we have an issue. You need to have massive scale…but you get to massive scale by small scale!

I usually find Seth quite on point with his insights and highly recommend you follow his daily email here.

The first entrepreneur meet up was quite successful and I look forward to hosting these every other month. To prevent the barrage of emails please note the events will remain invite only. Please don’t email me to get in, just keep doing great work and others who are invited will ask you be invited.