The Empathy Advantage: How to Scale Sustainably by Loving Your Customers

Hello and welcome, my name is Tavi Shima, AED. I solve sales and marketing challenges and I'm making today's podcast recording at home. So expect the usual interruptions since it's a public holiday and everybody's around. Now, the goal of this podcast is not to talk about my family life, but here we talk about business education. So do me a favour, please spread the word so that your friends and family members in Nigeria and abroad can benefit from the questions that we tackle.

They can subscribe on Spotify, YouTube, Apple or any player of their choice. And if you in particular, dear listener, have any sales and marketing questions, bring them to me. You can call, you can SMS, you can send a WhatsApp message on 08064662140. Now today on the podcast, we are going to look at how to scale a business with love and not just data. The reason why I want to look at scaling your business in more detail is because yesterday's episode, I think was yesterday's episode, if I remember correctly, that is where we tackled the question from I

think was Uje in Abuja, that's the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja, who had some questions around how to scale his aggregator business. You know, he's in the business of doing logistics. So this is your first time of listening to the podcast. After you're done listening to this episode, skip one episode. Listen to that one. You will get the larger context. So for those of you who are newbies now, scaling a business,

what does that mean? Scaling a business just means growing a business or multiplying your business beyond your personal effort. So, OK, well, there's no need for me to give any more examples because I gave an example in the previous episode. But basically when you get to that level where you're ready to grow the business and you want to expand it beyond what you can personally do, that is scaling. So for those of us who are one man team, A1 woman squad or a whatever, when you get to that point where you now want to start achieving beyond what your own personal efforts can guarantee, then we are ready to scale or we are trying to scale.

Now, if you listen to yesterday's episode, you will remember that I said the things that are required to scale people, processes and technology. You need people because you need a team, because you need people to delegate something to Abby. You have to delegate something to exactly because if you want to scale your business and it's just you, then your business is limited to how much we can do. So for someone in my own situation now, for instance, I

don't have any stuff at the moment, although I was discussing with my wife and, you know, later on I probably need to get an administrative assistant note for sending out invoices, you know, scheduling coaching sessions, you know, that kind of thing. So I probably need to get somebody like that sometime soon. But please don't start sending me your CV. I did not say I am hiring yet. I just said I was crossing with my wife and I probably have to hire somebody soon.

But in the meantime, right now, things are limited to what I can personally do myself. In other words, if I don't do something, it does not get done. If I can do something but I only push it 50%, it will stay at 50% until I push it some more. But then when you don't have people around you and you build up a team and you can delegate stuff, then stuff can be done. You can take a holiday and things are still moving, or you can say you don't want to deal with something.

You push it on to somebody else's table and the person will take it the rest of the way. So you need people and ultimately business is a team sport. So one way or another, eventually we're going to need a team. Now for people who are trying to build what they call cottage business or lifestyle business, then you know it's absolutely it's not necessary. So if you're just you and your wife and people are just fine, you know, you're making, you know, 10M20M every year and people are just cool.

You don't want to grow to 4050, sixty, 8100, You know, it's all right, it's not a big deal. But for people who want to scale, eventually you have to start building teams of people outside you so that you can delegate something so that people have responsibility for moving other things beyond you. So that's the people part. Then we need processes. Processes or systems. The whole idea behind processes and systems is this.

The people that you have hired to work for you, they need some sort of compass to tell them this is where we are going, this is what we're going to do next, and this is the right order for how we're going to do these things. If we don't have processes and systems, then what's going to happen is whenever there's Yawa, whenever there's a problem, whenever you're trying to put some new agenda, everybody's going to keep buzzing your phone to say, oga, what's next, Madam,

What's next? I run into this problem. What am I supposed to do? And then you will now look as if you are trying to reduce your headache, but by hiring more people, you have multiplied your headache. Well, in a certain sense, yes, more people means more headache. But The thing is, if you do not have systems and processes and frameworks in place, there's nothing to tell people. This is where we're going and there's nothing to tell people.

This is the next order in which things ought to be done. Then you will always be your headache that we'll always have to call you back. So we definitely need processes and systems. Then technology. Technology, of course, just means the tools that we use to leverage our effort and also to make things more effective. So like in my own case now, for instance, the podcast, the podcast is one way that I achieve leverage. I create a bit of content, I put it up on the podcast, and then hundreds and thousands of you will get ahead.

So I'm multiplying my effort, multiplying my impact because I'm using technology to leverage certain aspects of my business. And you will have to do it too when you are ready to scale. I'm not saying you'll have to start a podcast, but there will be ways that you can look at certain technologies that will make you more effective and make it easier for you to scale. So in yesterday's podcast episode, we're looking at how Uche, if Uche was able to get a,

a dispatch, a digital dispatch board, it will make the business a whole lot easier because there are lots of you in which is situation and the only way that you're tracking dispatch is because you know, you have your cousin who is helping you. My cousin is using WhatsApp. In other words, if somebody pings and says how far now I paid since 8:00, he will say you deliver by 10. It's currently 11. Where are you people? That is how somebody's managing the thing using WhatsApp.

And yeah, at the end of the day, we'll get the job done. But The thing is it's not very effective. And then because of lapses in the process, they're going to be lots of customers who'll be unhappy because somebody paid at 8:00. You do the person, you deliver at 10, the person is now sending you angry WhatsApp message at 11 saying how far? I've not seen dispatch writer. But if you have a digital, a dispatch board, I'll be whatever that thing is called, so I can't remember.

Then there's something that is pinging that is showing in real time. This person paid at 8 O clock. This is where the person's order is now. It's on the showroom floor. We are packaged. We have given to dispatch writer. This is where dispatch writer is, you know, so that kind of thing. Be able to stay on top of things. One person will be able to stay on top of multiple deliveries. Instead of just being in a WhatsApp message inbox and then responding to angry customer messages all the time, the person will be able to be proactive.

So depending on your business, depending on the context, your context, you will need people to scale, you will need a team, you need people to delegate things to, you will need processes. You need to come up with frameworks that tell people, what are we doing today? What are we doing tomorrow as a company? Where are we heading? And then for this particular task, task, what are we going to do? What is step A, What is step B,

What is step C? And then you will need technology so that you can leverage everybody's efforts and then make everybody effective. So if this is your first time listening to the podcast, like I said, when you're done, just listen to yesterday's episode, you will get a much more concrete example about scaling a case study. So now, OK, like I said, we're going to look at scaling a business with love, not just with data. So what is data now?

Data is just information that you need for decision making, full stop. The reason why we need data is because you can't scale a business in a vacuum. Well, you can. You can just wake up one day and say I want to scale my business. You can't do that. It works, but it will help if you have small data, if you have small information because you need something that's going to guide how you're making this decision. Where am I starting from?

Where am I moving to? If I'm scaling, what kind of level am I scaling to? Can we double production? Can we triple? Can we quadruple? You don't just make those decisions in a vacuum. You need some kind of data to know where it is that you're moving to. So one set of data that you need obviously is financial data. You need to know, are you growing? Are you stagnant or are you in decline? Are you guys making profit? How much, How much profit are you making?

Are you operating margins good or bad? Do you guys have good cash flow? In fact, listening about operating margins, if you listen to yesterday's episode, that's exactly what I was talking about. When I was talking about what was it called, again, I've forgotten, I was talking about unique economics. Unique economics? How much profit are you making on one particular thing that you sell on each delivery? How much money are you making?

Or let's say you sell bathroom slippers or I don't know, what can I think of standing fans? OK, so let's say you're in the business of selling standing fans, AC, things like that. Are the unique economics good? Are you making enough money on one? Now we need to know the answer of all these things because when we're going to scale is money that we'll use to scale. Now remember I said people, processes, technology, technology, you will pay for it,

OK, Processes, you define, you design it yourself. But then people should be you pay salary. So we need money. So we definitely didn't know the finances, the figures, how is the business doing? That's all. Let us know whether we can scale this year or not. Because you can wake up and say, guys, I beg, let's scale this business, let's double production. Whenever by the time you sit down and look at your figures, you see that or more, you can't afford to double production,

then what you do now is to continue where you are until the financial figures is adding up. They can also, OK, we're ready to scale. Then you will also need customer data. So that's all the good stuff they taught us in primary school or junior secondary school. Those of us who did their business studies, you know, back then, they teach us about demographics. So demographics of your customer, you know, who are they, how old are they, what is the occupation, where do they live, you know, blah, blah,

blah. So that's what they taught us back in the day, demographics. But with the advent of social media technology, it's now easier to track people's interests. So those ones are called psychographics. So what are they interested in? So we need to know all those things. You need to know your customers, who are they? Where do they live? What do they like? What are they interested in? What are their hobbies? All these things are important because from a sales and business development perspective, let us remember that if we do not know who we are chasing, we will waste time and we will waste money running after every Peter and Paul and Precious and you know, and at the end of the day, you don't make anything because you are chasing the wrong person.

Sometimes we waste a lot of resources chasing somebody who will never, ever, ever buy. It's a conversation that I had with someone yesterday who is a media buyer and she told me, I asked who is your ICP? And she said what she say again, She said professional, What do you say again, senior, mid to senior level professional something, something. The moment she said it, I could really see problem because I was thinking, look, some of these people that you're calling like people who are trying to rise up the ranks within the corporation, these are not necessarily people who want to pay money.

So I asked her, OK, your first client, who's the, who's the 1st client she ever had to say, oh, was a businesswoman based in Lagos. She was manufacturing, this was a product that she was manufacturing. The factory was here, she has 200 employees, blah, blah, blah. Said, hey, you see that has a different kind of person. This kind of person now is willing to invest money to buy media services because she's manufacturing, she's manufacturing in Lagos, she has products that she wants to sell.

So for her, she's thinking even if it's 5050, but if I'm able to get on the air, if I'm able to get on the radio, if I'm able to get here, if I'm able to get there, it should be able, it should be able to give me opportunities to be able to sell my product. So aside you how show her that's the media relations professional, how you know you're not looking at this ICP thing correctly. You're spending time talking to people who will never, ever,

ever pay you money. But if you look at this person now, this woman, she's a businesswoman. She's thinking in terms of narrow and Kobo. So for her, it's a calculation of OK, whether I'm gambling or not, but she's trying to see, you know, where will I spend money that will give me access to different eyeballs so that people will now buy my product or my service. And then we started to refine our ICP. So in the beginning, we need to know who are you chasing?

A lot of you. The reason why a business is struggling is because you're wasting time talking to Peter and Paul. Meanwhile, Peter and Paul will never, ever drop money for you. But then Precious is over there. For some reason. You don't know that Precious is your ideal customer, so you're not spending time talking to Precious. So customer data, we need all that data. Demographics, psychographics, We need to know what's up.

We need to be talking with our customers. We need to be getting feedback from our customers. We need to be able to track the sentiment of our customers, who is happy, who is not happy, and that's the reason why I talk to people about CRM, customer relationship management tool. Now it doesn't have to be anything fancy, but even if you're this business that is using Excel sheets and you're tracking things like you did customer with Missus Ogadingbay,

this is how much Missus Ogadingbay paid. This is where she lives, this is her business, blah, blah, blah. This is how the deal went. Missus Ogadingbay was happy about this much, was dissatisfied about this. Even if you're using Excel sheet to track these sorts of things, you see that when you're now ready to scale and you're getting ready to for your new marketing campaign and everything to now attract more people because you've doubled your capacity.

You can see that is when you have all these concrete data, all the people you've been doing business with, Mr. Pius, Mrs. Ogdenbe, Mr. Amado, you know, is that you'll now be able to say that, oh, OK, This advertising campaign that we're doing, we're supposed to be targeting this kind of somebody, this kind of somebody, that kind of person. So we need a customer data, then another set of data that you need before you scale.

Operational data. Very, very important. Basically, when I saw operational data, I just mean production and lead times. So like back in my wedding photography days, the boys that I used to work with, to be honest, they could produce a book in 3-4 days. But me, I used to pad, I will now tell the customer that it would take them two weeks for the book to be ready. Because sometimes the boys will produce the book in three days.

By the time you carry it, you will now see some serious error. You now have to take the book apart and then make it again. And I prefer telling somebody your book will be ready in two weeks and then I come back to them in five days and say, oh, the book was done early. They'll be happy rather than me telling them your book will be ready in four days. I spot an error and I said, oh, you know what? Unfortunately it will be right in actually Wednesday.

So me, I was used to pad, but that's what we mean basically by production and lead times. How long does it take you to do fulfillment? How long does it take you to manufacture? How long does it take you to deliver? You know, things like that. How much inventory do you have in store? We need all this information because if your production times and lead times are bad because you want to scale, you now double capacity. Yeah, last week you serviced 100

customers, but you want to scale. So this week you pushed and you get 200 customers. But if your production times and lead times are poor, man, that will be a lot of angry people, a lot of angry people. If your capacity right now is that you can only service 100 customers a week, I beg continue to service those 100 customers a week until realistically speaking, you have the finances and the infrastructure to be able to increase your capacity.

Because The thing is, if you service 100 people comfortably every week, you want to scale, you push to 200, you're now creating a bad experience for customers. You now start causing attrition and you now start causing bad reputation for yourself. Attrition just means anytime the customer is interacting with you and they have an unpleasant experience and that causes them to fall out. And unfortunately, when things are good, people are happy, but they don't really talk about it.

But when things are bad, people are angry and unfortunately they talk about it a lot. Don't say it's not fair. It's just the human condition. If you do well, people will be happy with you. They will tell one or two people, but if you do bad, they'll be angry and they will tell six or seven. It's just, it is what it is. So you need your operational data to make sure that everything lined up nice, everything is lining up smooth before you try to scale.

So this is some of the data that you need. And The thing is, you know, if you talk to people who are specialists in this field, there are lots and lots and lots of other things that you need. But I'm just trying to show you how, if you want to scale, you don't just wake up one day and say, whoa, bio, let's say Bio is your business partner, or Benedicta, OK? You don't just wake up one day and say Bio Benedicta. You know, we've been doing this business for five years now and we're currently averaging 10

million in annual revenues. You know, I believe that, you know, we've been in this business for a while. We suppose scale we should be doing like that kind of 150 M. You don't just wake up and decide like that. You look inside your house and you calculate one or two things. First, you now see if you have what is needed, what is on ground that will allow you to now scale. So there's a whole lot. Now some of you ask what has love got to do with this thing?

Because remember I said we're going to see how we can scale the business with love and not just data. Some of you say it is business, ain't nothing about love here. When we talk about business, we just need data. We just need money. And in a sense, I would say you're correct. But to be honest, if you've noticed, we've done over 1000 episodes and I've not made any episode around love, authenticity, blah, blah, blah, all that soft fancy stuff.

The reason why I don't talk about these sorts of things on the podcast is because, well, first of all, they're easy to talk about and you can talk about in a sentimental way. And so because of that, everybody's talking about how you should love your customer. However, I'm going to bring a different perspective to it because when most people say love, they're talking about feelings. However, if you don't look about, you don't talk about love, especially from a rational point of view, love does doesn't mean feelings.

I'm Catholic, in case you don't know. Well, for those of you listening, you already know that I'm Catholic. Now the Catholic tradition, especially from the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, we know that love is willing the good of the other for the benefit of the other. So let me repeat, love means you want another person to do well. You want another person to succeed. That actually is what love is. It's not about the fancy feelings.

That's the reason why for those of you who listen to have listened to the podcast for a while, you remember that time that me and my son were quarreling and he was saying that, you know, I don't love them. I was like, look, I love you boys. That the fact that I'm shouting and the fact that once in a while. I knock you on the head doesn't mean that I don't love you. That love is not about fancy feelings. Hollywood is deceiving us all.

That love is fancy feelings and that's rubbish. That love is when I will your own good for the sake of your own good. I want you to do well for your own sake. That is what determines that I love you. So I told my sons like, yes, that I'm shouting at you doesn't mean I don't love you. It's a sign that I love you because I want you to do well for your own sake, not for me, because me, I'm trying to arrange my own self, whether I

succeed or not, you know, that's another whatever. But for you, I want you to succeed on your own merit. For you, that is love, Dave. I'm looking at you boys and smiling at you people every single day. But because of that, I'm not trying to set your people right. That's not love. OK, maybe I shouldn't be knocking people on the head all the time, I understand. But I have to tell them now. Look, love is not about fancy feelings.

Excuse me? And the time will come very soon when you boys will be fathers as well. Don't be deceived by what Hollywood says, that love is about fancy feelings. Because you can be fancy feeling your children all the time and because of that you, you forget or you're not willing to tell them what is good for their own sake so that they can progress. That's not love, that's just pandering anyway. So that's the same thing in business.

Loving your customers is not just about fancy feelings and wonderful designs. You know, that's what we do in Niger all the time. Never wants to be more loving. What do they do? They create better graphics. What a board wants to be more loving, they create better graphics. Government, power, State House, you know, they create wonderful advertising campaigns, wonderful mascots and things like that. They're trying to put a much more loving face, you know, but we APP, you're just creating nice optics.

But me, the customer, I'm not feeling the love. So when you start willing the good for somebody else, you want the good of the other person. That's when you're showing love. Now, what does all this name mean in the business context? I'm talking about Catholic Church, I'm talking about Thomas Aquinas, and I'm talking about my children. So let's forget all that thing. Let's come down to business now. So what does love mean in the business context?

When you want what is best for the customer. Now we're talking love because we're looking at the customer. We are being customer focused. It's not about fancy feelings. When you start looking at what is in the best interest of the customer, now we are talking love, real love. Whether you actually like them or not, whether you actually have fuzzy feelings or not, the fact that you're putting down interests first. Now we're talking love.

So we should be scaling, not just for profit, not just because Bio Benedicta, we've been in this business for 10 years. We've not broken the five million level. You know what we need to scale? We need to be doing 150 million per annum. Not just that. So scale not just for profit, but scale because you want to achieve wider customer impact or because you have the capacity to achieve wider impact and to deliver more value.

When you look at things from that level now you are scaling with love. It's not about fancy feelings. It is because of the good of the market and the good you think you can do in the market. Now the way this thing works is all about the value exchange. You deliver value, you capture value. That's how we all make money in business, like take down with it with the refinery, deliver value to the market, capture some value is the way it works.

Or like me as a, as a consultant, I deliver value to you, your business grows, you make some progress, I capture some value, you pay me good money. So that's how it works. So if you're going to scale now we love with the customers, the focus, the question that becomes how do you scale while keeping the customer as the centre or what the focus of it all? First off, you listen actively at all times to your customers and this is where people make mistakes.

You'd be surprised. A number of people that I talked to and I say, oh, like the lady yesterday that I was talking to, the one who is in media relations. Oh, OK, so the woman who you able to your first client that you secured media coverage from, how you got her on Channels TV, you know, blah, blah, blah. What was she trying to do in her business? I don't know. I'm like you didn't ask her said no, I didn't ask. So we are not even listening to your customers ask.

OK, ma, we're going to get you on this slot this and this that and that. Where are you currently with your business? What are you trying to achieve? What are you hoping that if we get you on Channels TV that we'll be able to help you do this, do this, do that. Lots of you don't even talk to your customers. What is she trying to do? I don't know. Were there other campaigns that were running in the business that we could have tied back into this media or something?

Oh, I don't know. I didn't ask her. Well, no, even talking to your customers, talk to your customers. What are they trying to do? What are they trying to achieve? In fact, from a sales and business development perspective, the reason why we ask them is because that is what will allow us to now give a much more tailored and effective proposal. Because think about it, somebody come and says I want to be on Channels TV. You say, OK, sure, no problem, I

can put you on Channels TV, just pay me 250,000 naira, I'll hook it up. The person pays you 250,000 naira, you put them on Channels TV, you go your way, they go their way. But if you ask some questions, oh fine, no problem, I can get you on Channels TV. But before I start hooking it up, what exactly are you trying to achieve? Oh, this is my business. This is what I'm doing. I'm trying to grow like this, blah, blah, blah, blah.

OK, What campaigns are you currently running now, whether offline or online? Is there any promo that you're doing or something? Oh, OK, OK. Based on what you're doing now, Ma, I know you want to be on Channels TV, but to be honest, it might make more sense based on this and this and this campaign that you're running. Maybe we should put you on a radio slot instead for this particular station so that we'll tie in this radio thing with a call to action that will feedback into all these other things they are working on.

That is when we don't end up with a situation where people are happy with our services. Because I told her that these are the things that cause misunderstanding in business. Somebody will say, give me 250, put me on channels. They pay you 250K. You put them on channels you, you know, you've done a good job to the best of your ability. The other person, since you didn't have the conversation, the other person gets on channels TV.

And the end of the day, the channels TV doesn't give her any results. Who do you think she'll be angry with? You think she'll be angry with herself? She will be angry at you, the business provider that you didn't sort out. Well, the reason why she would feel that way is because you didn't have the conversation with her. So you are not able to make the recommendation that actually was best for her to fit her needs. Lots of business owners in Nigeria say that Nigerian customers are ungrateful.

The problem is not that we're ungrateful. You don't know your customers, you've not been asking any questions and so because of that, you're delivering something of value in your mind but it's not of value to them. You didn't ask them what was in their mind. So you don't know what it is that they're trying to achieve. Talk to your customers, listen actively. There's also something that people in America now talking about, they say social listening.

Basically that means when you just look at social media and you see what kind of things that people are saying. So that's social listening as well. From looking at social media, you'll be able to know what's up. OK, Like I mentioned NEPA and water board. To be honest, NEPA doesn't need to call me to ask me what's the problem. All they have to do is all they have to just go and check Twitter, see what people are tweeting about.

Whenever what they're tweeting. That is public sentiment. Sorry, I say public. That is your customer sentiment. That is what your customers are thinking. So there are some industries where all you have to do is just go and open social media. You will see what is on the mind of people because they're talking with their food chest. You now know that. Oh, OK, we've been doing this. This is the progress we're making. But honestly, our customers,

they feel like they feel like it is pinching them this way or just pinching them that way. So listen to your customers at all time. Engage in conversations. If you don't like engaging in conversation and you're in the kind of industry where you can get lots of feedback, do social listening. So for those of you who are in the media buying space, in the PR space, in the market communication space, if you don't have leave out to be asking people questions, just be paying attention to what people are saying online.

You will get a sense. For instance, online, people like to complain that they paid for advertising, but advertising is useless. They're not getting any returns. So we've joined the marketing communication space. Just by paying attention to social media, you will get a sense that OK, people are paying us for advertising but they think the advertising is ineffective. Either we shall listen. If you ask me, Listen by how?

By having conversations. In fact, be doing both, be having the conversations and be doing social listening. Then also, as you're talking to customers, you should try and identify friction points in customer interaction because when you try to scale your business, those points will be really, really tested. Think about it, there was a time when Nigerian banks, if you call the Nigerian bank, they'll put you on hold maybe like 2

minutes. I know some of you listening now will be like what, 2 minutes? Yeah, There was a time actually that if you call the bank, you'll be on hold maybe 2 minutes Max. But I was then now even 2 minutes. In my own opinion, I think it's a long time for somebody to wait, somebody who is angry about something. But then Nigerian banks want to scale and they're not doing a good job of testing their capacity and whether they have what it needs.

And so they go ahead and they scale anyway. And then what happens? Now there are some banks that I don't even bother calling. I don't even call the bank's name. There's one bank that's put me on hold 30 minutes. So now I don't even bother. If there's a problem, my wife would say call customer care. I'm like, no, I don't. I beg. I'm not calling customer care. What I'll do is tomorrow morning after I drop the kids at school,

I'm just driving to the bank because I don't have to wait on the phone in 30 minutes. I just drop the kids in school. I'm going to the bank and I want to talk to customer care what we say about you're wasting time and I was like, look at back for me just feels better that way instead of calling and waiting 30 minutes because sometimes they put you on hold 30 minutes and then at a minute 35, the line will just cut. I've wasted my time.

So may I prefer I drop the kids. I walk in and I see them. So identify friction points. If your customer service, you're keeping people to wait for two minutes when they call because they want to report the problem, you now know that OK, you know what? By the time we scale, this friction point will be tested. We need to plug this thing. We need to work on something here. We also need to prioritize seamless service. Try and make things smooth for your customers.

I beg you, try and make you smooth especially for Nigerian businesses. Do you know why? This is the reason why in Nigeria, nobody gives an F about the customer. As long as people are counting money, they're fine. When you show up on the scene and looks as if you care for the customers, ha, Nigerian customers are not used to being treated. They're not used to receiving nice professional treatment. So the moment anybody comes and is providing some kind of nice professional treatment, people fall in love with you.

I remember the first time I told somebody, oh, I'm absolutely sorry, it's my fault. I take full responsibility for that. Please Ma, don't be annoyed, I need to ask you a couple of questions so I can try and figure out what is going on here and I'll do my best to make sure that we resolve the problem. The way she calmed down, even me, I was surprised. The reason why she calmed down like that is because that woman has never, ever, ever heard anybody in her 40 something years of life has never heard a Nigerian businessperson tell her that.

Omar, I'm absolutely sorry. I take responsibility for this. This is not what we intended. We will do our best to resolve the situation. But before we do that, can I ask a couple of questions? I just want to understand what it is that went down so maybe we can copy the proposal that work for both ways that you will be satisfied. We to be satisfied. Nobody ever spoken to her like that. So Duma was shocked and she calmed down.

I'm telling you, in Nigeria, the standards are not too high. People are used to being abused and harassed. So the moment you start showing some of these things in your business set you apart a lot. Try and make sure that your service is seamless. This thing of that I said about somebody who deliver who pay for meat at 8:00. I said the meat should be delivered by 10 in the house and then by 11 you start calling the cost the the company that how far I've not seen your delivery people.

Now think about it. If you come into this space, you're selling meat on Instagram. The fact that you deliver on time sets you apart from every other business. Trust me, the fact that you tell somebody who deliver by 1010 o'clock you show up even now, one will set you apart because the average person, the average business, Nigeria will promise you 1012 o'clock you've not seen them 1:00, you're still chasing them. They will now deliver at 4:00 in the afternoon even though they promised you they will deliver at 10.

So for you, in fact, you don't even have to be on time, just be 30 minutes late, you're ready. You're already better than all the other people anyway. So your service, prioritize seamless service. Then Omni channel support. People should be able to reach you multiple ways, phone, e-mail, chat, social, any which way. And then of course you have to train your employees to be customer facing. So that is how you keep the customer at the centre of it all when you are ready to scale.

All right, so we're almost at 40 minutes. Let me just bring this thing to a close summary of what I'm trying to say is scale your business. Yes, but don't just scale because you need more money. Scale because there is more value that you can deliver to the market and you actually have the capacity to deliver on that value. And then keep the customer as a focus while you're scaling your business or else you will create some serious problems.

And remember, as our Uncle Peter Drucker said, if you don't have customer, you don't have business. I repeat, if you don't have customer, you do not have business. So that's the reason why they're important. So that's all for today, folks. Remember, if you have any sales or marketing questions, bring them to me. You can call, you can SMS, you can WhatsApp me on 08064662140. Thank you very much for your time and attention.

I will catch you next time. Same place in your headphones or in your speakers.