Mastering the marketplace

One speaker at the recently concluded TEDxAccra 2016 spoke impassionedly about the ills of the entrepreneurial journey – an aspect of entrepreneurship that we often don’t like to take about, or something we often don’t want to admit. He spoke about the tremendous uncertainty that is concomitant with being an entrepreneur as well as the ensuing depression that has come with that for many entrepreneurs. He spoke about the need for there to be openness and more honesty in the entrepreneurial narrative, and for the need for entrepreneurs to have a supportive community of other entrepreneurs around them to engage, share lessons and support one another.

As he spoke I was reminded that one the thing that you so often hear from entrepreneurs and about entrepreneurs is the need for a deep compelling passion for what it is that you are doing. I don’t disagree with that. I would just want to add, and add in the strongest of terms, that passion alone will not sustain you on the entrepreneurial journey. You need a strong knowledge and understanding of the marketplace in your sphere of work, as well as a deep appreciation of what that marketplace needs for you to operate successfully and sustainably in the medium to long term.

Let me explain what I mean with an anecdotal parallel. It’s rather like a parent saying of their newborn: I am going to bring this child up with so much love, that s/he is going to be a gift to this world. A gift to this world s/he may be, but whilst a foundation of love is a vital ingredient for raising a child, that foundation alone will not prevent the child from being bullied at school for instance, it will not stop the child from failing at math. In other words that love foundation, whilst crucial, will not prevent a child from the negative externalities of the features of this world that we live in. That love will sustain you, it will help you to go through and come out of many an uncertain times, but it will not prevent uncertainty.

Likewise the entrepreneur.

For the entrepreneur, mastering the marketplace is a key continuous necessity for going the long haul in business. What do I mean by the marketplace – that space that you operate in, that space that comprises your product, your clients, your suppliers, your team, your financing, and your intellectual property. That space is intangible for some, but for the more successful and the more resilient entrepreneur, that space is very tangible for they make it their business to know, understand, assess, learn from and develop that space and that marketplace. It is their passion for their service and or product that leads them to a relentless almost incomprehensible obsession to understand their own unique marketplace.

And it is true; the marketplace is different for everyone. For each and every business, no matter how similar, there will be, there must be, nuances that make you, your brand, your service and your product, distinctive. However, if you have not studied the marketplace, if you have not thought deeply about the marketplace, you will not know your nuance and you may not effectively communicate your USP to the outside world. Passion alone will not sustain you.

Peter Senge, in his decisive work, The Fifth Discipline, alluded that “The only sustainable competitive advantage is an organization’s ability to learn faster than the competition.” And there you have the operative word – learn. Learning must become a way of life for the entrepreneur. It is not enough to create Instagram, Facebook and Twitter pages, engineer likes and exhibit your products and selfies with celebrities on social media. No. The marketplace, the viable marketplace, is less trivial. The world needs a compelling reason to buy your product and to be a loyal customer – in the long term – and it will take much more than clamor to achieve that.

It will take deliberate learning, purposeful engagement with like minded people, conscious conversations, decisive mentoring and a truly informed and engaged network to reach the mountain top of entrepreneurship. What all of that process does is that it changes you, it strengthens you and it grooms you to be the leader, the business leader that you need to be for your business, your clients, and your team. Selfies with personalities and social media likes will not get you there.

Senge also said: “Business and human endeavors are systems… we tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system. And wonder why our deepest problems never get solved.” By focusing on our passion alone, we focus on snapshots, and in doing so, we may fail to really see, to really respond to the opportunity, the usefulness and the value of our business idea, product and service, to the outside world.

We need to master the marketplace.

My own response to this dilemma is a Masterclass called Mastering the Marketplace, which outlines a framework for fine-tuning a business concept, and developing a responsive business strategy and roadmap that will meet the needs of your preferred clientele and your business as a whole.

Message me for details.