Let me tell you a story, a story of a Nigerian Boy, An “Aji-no-moto” Pen, his Father, and his primary 4 Exams.
But before I do, something has been bugging me; two weeks ago, we woke up to the news of a West African promising fintech start-up that has successfully raised several millions of dollars from investors suddenly packing up, and when we read the account, we were told that the CEO was paying himself a whopping “$50,000” monthly as salary. I cringed when I read this, I don’t want to talk about the issues of corporate governance in this case, what were the investors doing while this was going on, didn’t they spot this trait in the CEO before investing? Investors are known to make their decisions 90% of the time on the founder’s pedigree and dispositions as this guarantees whatever value that was promised. I digress.
This case as you may have perceived my dear readers is a lesson in “Delayed Gratification”, Amongst other things this CEO must have displayed this level of extravagance across the board until the company ran out of runway. When the business had not started making that level of income, he was obviously spending from “working capital” to fuel this lifestyle. Lest we start pointing one finger at him while four others point at us, lack of discipline to delay gratification is the Achilles heel of most entrepreneurs, it eventually leads to the collapse of most African businesses that would have grown to be trans-generational.
Now let me tell you the story of the Nigerian Boy, I will be brief; this boy in primary school for several school terms was taking home his report card after exams shuttling between 9th and 10th positions in class over and over, he was a bright chap but was often distracted, His Dad had tried several means to get him to move closer to top 3 of his class without success, then an opportunity came; the dad had an Aji-no-moto Branded Pen (apologies to the Gen Z’s, ask your older ones or parents what aji-no-moto is) which the boy liked and had persistently asked for it, on this day, he asked again and the Dad got the idea of telling that if he made Top 3 in his class in the upcoming exams he would get the pen. And lo, after the said exams, the boy who had been shuttling between 9th and 10th, came out third in his class and he got the pen from an excited Dad.
Now what made the difference; The boy spurred on by the need for the pen delayed the gratification of engaging in the distraction that has kept him between 9th and 10th and built the discipline to study more, that’s just it!
Success in every endeavour of life most especially business requires you to ignore doing something easier (delaying gratification) in favour of doing something harder.
Delayed gratification in entrepreneurship means learning to live below your means in favour of re-investing in your business to grow and scale.
Delayed gratification means instead of apportioning that income to fancy clothes and jewellery at the pilot stages of your business to look a certain way, you invest in training yourself and getting new skills to run the business better.
Delay gratification means you waking up 1 or 2 hours earlier in the morning, to work on that proposal and have it completed to meet up with submission.
Delayed gratification means taking the stairs daily to meet your calorie-burn goal every day instead of using the elevator.
Delayed gratification means you skip watching that TV show or football match on the weekend in favour of catching up with that work or meeting you missed during the week.
I could go on and on, but I am sure you have gotten the message.
Some are born with the disposition to delay gratification, some must learn it, whichever applies to you, just know this, without the discipline of “delayed gratification,” success will be a stranger to you in business, if you don’t take my word for it, search for and read up on; “The marshmallow experiment”.
I rest.
PS, the boy in the story was me, see you next week!
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