Grit & Growth

Stanford Graduate School of Business

Meet intrepid entrepreneurs from Africa and South Asia, hear their stories of trial & triumph, and gain insights and guidance from Stanford University faculty and global business experts on how to transform today’s challenges into tomorrow’s opportunities.

From securing investment and planning family succession, to mindful leadership and managing in adversity, you’ll learn firsthand from entrepreneurs and experts on how to develop the grit you need to grow your business — in times of crisis and calm. Walk away with actionable information, new perspectives, and fresh inspiration to take your business to the next level.

Listeners can also take a deep dive into entrepreneurship with masterclass episodes featuring interviews with Stanford faculty and global experts. It’s a unique opportunity to hear about cutting-edge research, get practical business tips, and learn proven leadership strategies from some of the world’s leading thinkers and practitioners.

Grit & Growth is brought to you by Stanford Seed, a Stanford Graduate School of Business-led initiative that partners with entrepreneurs in emerging markets to build thriving enterprises that transform lives.


About The Host:

Darius Teter is executive director of Stanford Seed, a Stanford Graduate School of Business-led initiative that partners with entrepreneurs in emerging markets to build thriving enterprises that transform lives. Darius has held leadership positions at Oxfam America, the Asian Development Bank and with the US Government where his experience included advising governments on economic policy, developing human rights programming, and financing infrastructure megaprojects across Africa, Asia and Latin America. All the while, he remained intrigued by the human experience and our universal drive towards growth and prosperity.

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Episodes

Short Takes: Where Science Meets Culture
12-03-2024
Short Takes: Where Science Meets Culture
Meet Raj Prakash, cofounder of Zifo, a science informatics company in India. While growing revenues is on almost every entrepreneur’s mind, Prakash believes building a thriving culture should be too. Hear how creating a great place to work is helping his company achieve great results.Zifo is one of the largest global pure play science informatics companies, with over 1,800 employees. And it counts many of the largest global bio-pharma companies among its customers. The company focuses on technology for collecting and analyzing data that has been instrumental in the development of medications and vaccines for global viruses and illnesses. But that’s more of the quantitative story. For Raj Prakash, thinking about the qualitative experience of his employees is essential to success. “We are a science-first, people-first company,” he explains.Prakash has a broader definition of what it means to grow. “It's just not revenue,” he says. “ It is about opportunity to people, opportunity to explore self. It's doing something impactful. It's a people-driven mechanism that encourages persistence and tenacity to get results."“There is a culture of playing to win. Every action is measured in terms of intent and intensity of action, not just on result. It's fun, it is tough, but winning it together, or playing it together, even losing it together, it's fun. We want to be a place which is highly valued as a great place to work.”And it seems to be working. Zifo has been listed as one of the great places to work for seven consecutive years. Hear how Prakash is building a thriving culture while growing a company that leads to scientific breakthroughs.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Short Takes: Pioneering a Holistic Approach to Speech Therapy in Kenya
20-02-2024
Short Takes: Pioneering a Holistic Approach to Speech Therapy in Kenya
Meet Grace Macharia, a speech and language therapist and founder of SLT Support in Nairobi, Kenya. She created a social enterprise with a mission to support not only her patients, but also the profession of speech therapy in Kenya as a whole. “In 2011 there were about five speech therapists in Kenya, and all of them were trained out of the country. Can you imagine only five speech therapists for a population of 21 million?!” she recounts. When Macharia eventually found her true career calling in speech therapy, she realized that she couldn’t deliver the kind of impact she wanted without the help of others. So, she created a business, got the training she needed to formalize her business structure and organization, and began lobbying policy makers to give the profession the recognition and support it deserved.Not everyone is born an entrepreneur. Grace Macharia certainly didn’t think of herself that way. But she had the persistence of an entrepreneur and a deep concern for her patients, many of whom needed more than just speech therapy services. Today her company treats patients, trains new therapists, and offers a multidisciplinary, holistic approach to care that is yielding better outcomes. And she’s created an association of speech and language therapists in Kenya to support each other and lobby for reform.Of course, Macharia is still pushing for more. Speech therapy, she says, “is a profession that still needs a lot of attention. A lot of the people who need our services actually don't get it. When we have access to all this in every county, not just in Nairobi, not in just the cities in Kenya, but in every county, and not just in Kenya, East Africa, that would be a success and a dream come true.”Hear how Macharia got the entrepreneurial training she needed to run a business and promote her profession so that other therapists and patients succeed.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Introducing the If/Then podcast from Stanford GSB
30-01-2024
Introducing the If/Then podcast from Stanford GSB
If/Then is a new podcast from the Stanford Graduate School of Business that we think will be of great interest to Grit & Growth listeners. This episode features Stanford GSB Professor Jonathan Levav analyzing the premise, “If we want to generate better ideas, then we need to get people back to the office.”To Zoom or not to Zoom? That is the question on many leaders’ minds, nearly four years after the COVID-19 pandemic emptied offices around the world. While remote work has become the new normal, Jonathan Levav, Professor of Marketing at Stanford GSB, believes video conferencing is no substitute for face-to-face communication — especially where creativity is concerned. When it comes to the spontaneous and collaborative nature of coming up with new ideas, Levav says, “Screens are just too constraining.”Levav’s insights come from a research study where pairs were asked to devise alternative uses for everyday items. “Pairs that worked face-to-face generated 15 to 20 percent more ideas than pairs that worked on Zoom,” he notes. What’s more, in-person brainstorming helped people consider a wider and more diverse range of possibilities. “Working on Zoom was a double penalty,” Levav says. “Fewer ideas — and a narrower set of ideas.”Hear about Levav’s insights and research on remote work and how to keep your creative edge in our post-pandemic world.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Short Takes: Growing a Family and a Business
09-01-2024
Short Takes: Growing a Family and a Business
Meet Sakshi Kapahi, head of Omam Consultants, an HR consultancy in India, and a mother on a mission to balance home and work life for herself and her employees. Hear about Kapahi’s journey — the hurdles and highlights — as she grew both her family and the business her father started over 40 years ago.In India, a country where only 14 percent of entrepreneurs are women, Sakshi Kapahi has had to grapple with all the familiar obstacles that working mothers face … and then some. “You always get these questions, right? Oh, you must be working for your husband. Or you must be building this for your father or your husband. They assume there has to be a male member that will come through later,” she recounts. Having enough time for kids and business, what she calls “her two babies,” is a constant struggle. Kapahi says that building both a personal and professional support system is critical to juggling priorities and managing feelings of guilt. “One thing I'm still working on is you have to be kind to yourself as a woman, which is what we don't do. There's always guilt that I missed something for the team, in the office, at home. Everyone keeps saying ‘be kind to yourself,’ but nobody tells you how,” she says. Finding a female mentor with kids was incredibly helpful for Kapahi, and she strives to provide that kind of support for her employees as well, 70 percent of whom are women.Hear how Kapahi is tackling motherhood and entrepreneurship while growing a company that does the same for other women.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Workplace Friction: How to Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder
12-12-2023
Workplace Friction: How to Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder
Welcome to Grit & Growth’s masterclass on friction — the good, the bad, and the ugly. Robert Sutton, Stanford professor in the School of Engineering and best-selling author, has stories and strategies to help you identify the causes of friction, eliminate it, and even learn how to use friction intentionally to create more space for success. Friction, according to Bob Sutton, “ is simply putting obstacles in front of people that slow them down, that make their jobs more difficult and maybe a little bit more frustrating.” Sutton has written multiple New York Times bestsellers, including The No Asshole Rule, and Scaling Up Excellence with coauthor and Stanford colleague Huggy Rao. His upcoming book with Rao is all about the friction that typically arises after companies scale, and it is appropriately titled The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder.Sutton’s research shows that friction often starts at the top. Luckily, he has lots of advice for how to become more aware of the power and influence leaders wield and tips for eliminating unwanted friction in your organization.Seven Masterclass TakeawaysAdopt a trustee mindset. According to Sutton, “Leaders should be trustees of other people’s time.” This means not just trying to find ways of saving people's time, but also being aware of how you’re imposing on their time. Don’t be oblivious. “Leaders need to be aware of the power and influence they have,” says Sutton, because an offhand comment can send employees on a wild goose chase that costs time, energy, and money. “That’s what happens when people in positions of power…are unaware of their cone of friction.” Leaders also need to acknowledge their blind spots. Many assume that because of their success, they know everything that matters about their organization; what Sutton calls the “fallacy of centrality.” Either way, what you don’t know can certainly hurt you.Avoid power poisoning. “When people feel powerful or more powerful than others they tend to focus on their own needs over others and then they act like the rules don’t apply to them,” Sutton says. Friction is almost always the result.Embrace inconvenience. Leaders often get the VIP treatment. They don’t have to stand in line or wait on hold. But Sutton says that this “absence of inconvenience…is protecting you from the experience that your customers are facing.” If you don’t feel the friction yourself, how can you address it?Play the subtraction game.Sutton suggests approaching problems with a subtraction mindset as an antidote to what he calls addition sickness. He says, “First, make a list of stuff that's getting in the way and driving you crazy. Okay, so now what are you going to do to get rid of it?”Fight friction as a team.“Friction is often an orphan problem that we point at other people, and we tell them it's their job to fix it,” Sutton says. Given the high-friction nature of friction fixing, he suggests a team effort.Remember that not all friction is bad.Sutton acknowledges that some things should be hard, like cheating, stealing, and making stupid decisions quickly. He says “Sometimes, being fast — all that does is get you killed off more quickly. The goal of getting rid of mindless, unwanted friction is to clear the way for the things in life that are hard and should be hard.”Listen to Bob Sutton’s anecdotes and advice on how to recognize and remove friction in the workplace. The Friction Project will be released on January 30, and you can pre-order copies of the book now. (https://www.amazon.com/Friction-Project-Leaders-Things-Easier/dp/1250284414)See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Fail It 'til You Nail It: Masterclass on Embracing the Upside of Down
21-11-2023
Fail It 'til You Nail It: Masterclass on Embracing the Upside of Down
Welcome to Grit & Growth’s masterclass on growth mindset and psychological safety and how they can empower employees to speak up, fail fast, and fail smart — with accountability but not retribution. Sarah Soule, Stanford Graduate School of Business professor in organizational behavior, has tips and tricks for leaders to help build a culture that encourages healthy debate and out-of-the-box thinking.Failure happens … whether you like it or not.  Yet, almost every entrepreneur would agree that learning the right way to fail is what enables businesses to succeed. But how do you create an environment where people aren’t afraid to fail? According to Professor Soule, it all starts with building an environment of psychological safety: a climate where people feel comfortable sharing their ideas and concerns and speaking up when needed without being judged or viewed negatively by the leaders when they do.Soule encourages leaders to remember that all humans make mistakes. And in some types of work, failure is actually part of the process. However, failure is not a luxury every organization has — especially in health care — so she recommends simulating failure instead. The key, she explains, is that when we make mistakes, we learn from them and don’t hide them. Otherwise,  they’re likely to snowball into bigger mistakes. “One of the elements of psychological safety is that people on a team don't hide their mistakes. They also feel comfortable and safe to challenge their superiors, to challenge their colleagues, when they see something is about to go amiss,” she says.5 Masterclass Takeaways Not all mistakes are the same.Soule encourages everyone to “distinguish between mistakes that are made that should have been preventable — because somebody has been inattentive or has been sloppy or has just been going rogue — versus smart failure.”Try to learn from failure. “When and if we do fail or fall short of what we hoped, we can learn from it. That can only happen if the team feels like it is okay to bring forward these possibilities without you judging them or firing them because they're challenging you. It’s not who failed. No blaming. But why did we fail? And what can we learn from that?” she says.Walk the walk. Talk the talk.Soule advises leaders to align their actions and values. “I think one of the things that's very important, particularly for a new leader in an established organization, is to come in right away and express what the values and expectations of the culture are going to be, and then to continually repeat them, and demonstrate that it’s what the leader believes.”Strike a balance between acceptance and accountability. Soule says, “Leaders actually really need to distinguish between those two and not just celebrate all failure. There's got to be some accountability, right? When we have made mistakes that should have been preventable, we do need to hold people accountable for that.”Pre-mortems can be a safe way to simulate failure.“Pre-mortems are a structured but simple way to bring the whole team together to pretend that something has failed massively,” Soule explains. “Think very hard about what were the reasons for this failure and then brainstorm ways that those reasons could be averted as a way to prevent the failure from happening.”Listen to Sarah Soule’s evidence, advice, and strategies for how to leverage psychological safety to increase team performance, productivity, and innovation by failing in the right way.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Creating a Culture of Healthy Debate
31-10-2023
Creating a Culture of Healthy Debate
Does your company have a culture where people are truly free to speak their minds … without fear of retribution? At the start of the pandemic, Elikem Tamaklo, managing director for Nyaho Healthcare in Ghana, realized that the answer was no. Hear how he changed his company’s culture and his own behavior to lead his team through COVID-19 and beyond. Also, gain strategic insights from Sarah Soule, professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, on the process and benefits of creating an environment of psychological safety in your organization.Psychological safety wasn’t on Elikem Tamaklo’s mind when he joined his family’s private group medical practice. But in 2019 when the pandemic hit, uncertainty, fear, and challenging conversations were the norm. It didn’t take long to realize that if his team members weren’t willing to openly share what they were feeling and fearing, then decision-making would suffer. Psychological safety, according to Sarah Soule, professor of organizational behavior, is a climate where people feel comfortable sharing their ideas and concerns and speaking up when needed.  Most important, they must feel like they are not going to be judged or viewed negatively by the leaders when they do bring things up. Soule says the benefits to the organization are well-researched and impressive. “Morale is higher, burnout is lower, motivation is much, much higher. People are willing to participate in decision making and that leads to better decision-making. What we see is that team performance, creativity, and resilience increase, and we get higher levels of innovation,” Soule explains.During COVID, everything was amplified, especially for those working in health care.  The situation was made even worse when Tamaklo contracted the virus. He chose to publicize his diagnosis. “I said I would bear the risk personally. People acknowledged the bravery in sharing my COVID status and the narrative was more about people seeing that getting COVID is not your fault. So get tested,” he remembers. After much discussion, Nyaho became the first private organization to perform COVID testing.Expressing vulnerability is one of the ways Soule says leaders can model the behavior they seek in others. She explains “The hardest thing that leaders have to do is to both model the kind of behavior that they want on the team and be sure when they invite the truth, it's authentic and people believe it.” Soule also advises leaders and their frontline managers to speak less and last, engage in active listening, and construct norms for how teams interact.Listen to Tamaklo’s personal and company journey toward psychological safety and the challenges and benefits they’ve experienced. And get practical advice from Soule on how leaders and teams can create an open culture where productivity and innovation thrive.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
FLASHBACK | Raising Capital in Africa: It’s Not Just About the Money
10-10-2023
FLASHBACK | Raising Capital in Africa: It’s Not Just About the Money
We're excited to announce that Stanford Seed has a new advisory board member: Andreata Muforo. We are thrilled to have Andreata on our team! To celebrate, we're bringing back one of our favorite episodes from Season 1, "Raising Capital in Africa: It's Not Just About the Money", which featured Andreata as a guest. Enjoy! Original Show Notes:Meet Elo Umeh, Managing Director and CEO of Terragon Group, a Nigerian digital marketing and data insights company, and Andreata Muforo and Ido Sum from TLcom Capital, and learn how to make the most of your fundraising efforts to successfully grow your business in Africa.Elo never intended to formally raise money—he initially relied on friends and family to launch Terragon. But as the business grew, so did his vision, and he needed to find an investor that understood the enormous opportunity in a rapidly growing sector. Since 2016, he’s led Terragon through two funding rounds: a $5 million series A round and a bridge round of $4 million. Now a leader in Africa’s data and marketing technology space, Terragon is currently raising another $16 million for its Series B. Elo shares his fundraising journey, explaining that it’s not just about the money, but who provides the capital is also key. He ended up working with Andreata Muforo and Ido Sum from TLcom, a venture capital firm with experience investing in tech-enabled businesses across Sub-Saharan Africa. Their relationship demonstrates how the right investors can help your business grow and actually enhance—not dampen—the quality of your decisions as a CEO.Andreata and Ido of TLcom also share what they look for in a company and provide tips for how you can approach your next fundraising round.Listen to Elo’s journey and Andreata and Ido’s insights to learn how to maximize the value of your firm’s next fundraising round.Resources:Terragon Group: https://terragongroup.com/ TLcom Capital: https://tlcomcapital.com/ Stanford Seed: http://stanfordseed.co/GritSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
How to "Think Faster and Talk Smarter": a Masterclass with Matt Abrahams
19-09-2023
How to "Think Faster and Talk Smarter": a Masterclass with Matt Abrahams
Welcome to Grit & Growth’s masterclass on spontaneous communication — those unplanned moments when you’re called on in a meeting, asked to give feedback, or introduced to a potential investor. Matt Abrahams, Stanford Graduate School of Business lecturer in strategic communications, has tips and tricks to overcome anxiety, gain confidence, and make sure you’re ready to speak when you least expect it.Matt Abrahams speaks a lot  in public, whether he’s teaching MBAs at Stanford or hosting his podcast “Think Fast, Talk Smart.” And yet, he still gets nervous. He calls it getting the “ABCs.” “There's the affect or emotional component, the behavioral or what happens to your body, and then the cognitive part, what happens in your mind,” Abrahams explains. Luckily, he believes there are tons of techniques to manage your nerves, like holding something cold in your hands to calm you down, saying positive affirmations to give you confidence, and even using tongue twisters to both distract your mind and warm up your voice. Abrahams’ latest book, Think Faster, Talk Smarter, is filled with practical advice for how to prepare for your next spontaneous conversation. He says the biggest mistake people make in their communication is starting from the wrong place. “We start by saying, here's what I want to say, versus, what does the audience or person I'm speaking to need to hear. And that's a fundamental mind shift. If I don't understand from your perspective what's important for you, what knowledge you have now versus where I would like you to be, I can't tailor my message.” 7 Masterclass Takeaways AMP it up. If speaking makes you nervous, develop an Anxiety Management Plan to help you overcome the nerves. Focus, focus, focus. Abrahams reminds us that sometimes people just want to know the time, not how to build the clock. Prioritize connection, not perfection. “There is no right way to communicate. There are better ways and worse ways, but there is no one right way. And when we put that pressure on ourselves to do it right, we actually reduce the likelihood that we'll do it well at all.”Think about your audience, not yourself. “We really need to be other-focused. And the nice thing about being other-focused is not only is the message more likely to land, the other person is likely to feel more valued because you're tailoring the message to them,” says Abrahams.Make it relevant. And connect the dots for people. “If you can make something relevant to people, it's been shown that they process it so much more thoroughly and invest a lot of effort. We assume that if I set up everything, that you'll connect all the dots, and that's not always true.”Be clear when giving feedback.  Many leaders find giving feedback one of the hardest parts of their jobs. “When you give feedback, be very clear on what it is you're looking for. Many of us are just so frustrated, upset, at whatever's happening or not happening that we're not very clear,” Abrahams recommends.Prepare to be spontaneous. Using common structures like “problem, solution, benefit” to tell your story can be practiced for your next spontaneous interaction. Listen to Matt Abrahams’ communication insights, advice, and strategies for how to think faster and talk smarter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
The Business of Ending Generational Poverty in India: Haqdarshak!
29-08-2023
The Business of Ending Generational Poverty in India: Haqdarshak!
Creating a compelling strategy is step number one for every business. But almost no one gets it right on the first try. Aniket Doegar and “Guns” Ganapathy, co-founders of the Indian social enterprise Haqdarshak, pivoted multiple times while remaining focused on financial sustainability and their mission: eliminating generational poverty in India through access to social security.India, with a population of 1.4 billion, has about a billion people dependent on some form of social security, according to Aniket Doegar. And India has over 20,000 government programs. But most families are accessing only a tiny percentage of the programs they’re eligible for. “An urban family living in cities like Delhi and Bombay is eligible for about 25 to 30 programs, and all these families at any given point of time are not accessing more than 10 percent of them,” explains Doegar. That’s the problem Haqdarshak wants to solve — how to enable people in need to access the life-changing benefits they deserve. From the very beginning, Haqdarshak’s strategy was focused on generating revenue so the company wouldn’t be dependent on handouts or grants in the traditional nonprofit model. “It was almost an article of faith for me that scale can be achieved and lots of social problems can be addressed by thinking through a revenue model, by having financial sustainability built into the DNA of the organization,” says Ganapathy, who is not only a co-founder of Haqdarshak, but also its first investor, and formerly Stanford Seed’s regional director for South Asia.The two assumed that building a platform for end users to access benefits would be too expensive and that government contracts would be more financially reliable. Unfortunately they weren’t, and after not getting paid, they made their first pivot. And the pivots kept coming. But along the way, they  learned — and built upon —every setback. “I think this is an important lesson for social enterprises, that you've got to remain flexible sometimes and see the way in which the market responds to what you want to do,” advises Ganapathy.Ganapathy also warns social enterprises of the tension between financial sustainability and risk of mission drift. “It’s a challenge that most social enterprises face at some point in their journey. I think we did face this two or three years in where there was this temptation that we had this network of field agents, and we could have gone the way of adding financial products, insurance sales, things like that to the basket of goods that an agent carried, and made the organization more financially viable, but it would have meant a significant mission drift away from our original focus,” Ganapathy recalls.Having mission-driven investors can help you stay on track. Throughout the company’s journey, Doegar reminds himself of the big picture: “Do we want to be an organization which runs after capital and does everything, or do we want to be a specialized social security organization and really build an institution?Hear how Doegar and Ganapathy adjusted their strategy on the fly and stayed true to their foundational values, and learn where the company is headed now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Making Great Strategy: A Masterclass with Jesper Sørensen
08-08-2023
Making Great Strategy: A Masterclass with Jesper Sørensen
Welcome to Grit & Growth’s masterclass on strategy, featuring Jesper Sørensen’s insights on how to build a strategy for success and accept the inherent uncertainty of it all. This Stanford Graduate School of Business professor tells you what you need to know: from defining what a strategy is — and is not — to deciding who to involve and how to debate constructively. Every entrepreneur understands that their business needs a well-thought-out strategy to succeed. But the gap between knowing and doing can be daunting. Professor Sørensen, coauthor of Making Great Strategy: Arguing for Organizational Advantage, advocates for “starting at the end” by asking what it is you want to accomplish and what success looks like. “Then,” he explains, “you can start to say, okay, now here's all these things that we think might connect to what we want to accomplish.” While creating a strategy is a process that requires ongoing refinement, Sørensen reminds leaders to put their strategy into practice and learn along the way. What’s more, he cautions that successful execution depends on how well you communicate your strategy. He believes that everyone in your organization needs to understand the strategy and see themselves in it, because their work contributes directly to its success.If you want to hear more on strategy from Jesper, check out our episode Strategy: It's the Big Bets that Matter.8 Masterclass Takeaways A strategy is not a list of things you want to accomplish. “Essentially a strategy expresses the logic of success for the organization. How are we going to get the resources that we need in order to accomplish what it is we want to accomplish? You need to be able to articulate some sort of theory of how causes lead to consequences, how inputs lead to outputs, how actions lead to desired outcomes,” Sørensen explains.Strategy is about managing uncertainty. “That's why you have to think about strategy as an argument, built on assumptions about how the uncertainty is going to resolve itself so you can accomplish your goals,” he says.Your strategic argument needs to be logically valid. Sørensen says, “Look at whether the conclusion follows from the assumptions that have been stated. And what that requires you to do is to not say to yourself, that is a dumb assumption. For the sake of assessing validity, you just have to accept it to be true.”Make sure all the right people are in the room. “Everybody at the organization who makes decisions and allocates resources needs to understand the strategy, so that their own actions can support it.”How you debate matters. “The first thing you need to do is to create an environment where there is what we call psychological safety, where people feel free to dissent from the dominant opinion, and don't fear retribution,” he advises. He goes on, “Be careful about both verbal and nonverbal communication that shapes people's perception. No eye rolling. No shrugging.”Avoid arguing blue. Sørensen explains, “It basically means yelling at each other and sticking to your position and trying to win. Instead, you want people to be focused on whether the argument itself is logically coherent. Even if you don't believe in the assumptions, if you did accept the assumptions, the conclusion would follow.”Don't worry about it being perfect when you start. Sørensen encourages leaders to “go ahead and do the best you can and then take action. You're going to learn something. The data that's generated will shed light on your theory and then say, well, wait a second, I see that what we were assuming was that customers really cared about this, and that turns out to be wrong. So now how do I have to then adjust my behavior?”Your strategy problems are not unique. “What's always striking to me is how everybody thinks that their problems are totally unique to them. I like to encourage people to see that there's comfort in knowing that actually, no, those problems are the same problems that everybody else has,” he says.Listen to Sørensen’s insights, advice, and strategies for how to build your own strategy.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Unleashing the Power of Market Creation
18-07-2023
Unleashing the Power of Market Creation
Almost every entrepreneur dreams of becoming a market leader. But a business's greatest potential for success happens with market creation. Andela, led by co-founder and CEO Jeremy Johnson, did just that by unlocking access to a global labor market — for both job seekers and companies in need of great talent. Hear Andela’s market-making journey and gain insights on this kind of disruptive innovation from Efosa Ojomo, director of Global Prosperity at the Christensen Institute and co-author of The Prosperity Paradox.Andela is a Nigerian company that began with a tightly focused mission to train software engineers to compete on a world stage. “The original problem statement,” Johnson explains, “is that brilliance is evenly distributed. Opportunity isn't. How do we move towards a world where those things are a little bit more uniform, where someone's potential in life has less to do with who their parents were and where they were born, and more to do with the impact they're able to create?” Andela quickly realized that the most valuable part of the business wasn’t training the talent, but making it accessible. So, to connect all that brilliance with opportunities, Andela created a global talent marketplace to help companies simplify the process of hiring and working with talent from all over the world. This “market-making innovation” — creating an ecosystem for “non-consumers” — is what Efosa Ojomo believes made all the difference to Andela’s success. In the case of Andela, he explains, “The brilliant talents in Nigeria are non-consumers of opportunity. They just happen to be born in a country that could not leverage what they would give to the world. Andela is creating an infrastructure that connects them to that opportunity so that they can add value to the world.” And they’re doing the same for companies that face barriers to recruiting the best talent. According to Ojomo, “Unlocking this double-sided non-consumption unlocks so much value and the world becomes a better place as a result.”While many companies suffered due to the pandemic, it actually helped Andela by reinforcing the power of remote work. In just four years the company expanded from seven to 120 countries, and its leaders realized that the tricky part of global talent was the infrastructure, or lack thereof. So, they spent time and energy building a supply chain to make it easy for people to work together between countries, covering issues from payroll to compliance to taxes. “The primary driver of the business was companies coming to us and saying, ‘We want to be able to work with great talent. Can you help us? And can you make that easy? And because you trained them, we would like to work with you,’” Johnson explains.Listen to Johnson and Ojomo discuss Andela’s meteoric growth, regulatory hurdles, the role of data, and how looking at your product through the lens of market creation can unlock a business’s true potential.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Executive Coaching: Why Entrepreneurs Shouldn’t Go It Alone
27-06-2023
Executive Coaching: Why Entrepreneurs Shouldn’t Go It Alone
Welcome to Grit & Growth’s masterclass on coaching, featuring Laurie Fuller, a certified executive coach, who believes entrepreneurs can benefit from having a collaborator, connector, and cheerleader by their side. Fuller provides practical tips on what to look for in a coach plus tried-and-true techniques she uses to help her clients transform themselves, their teams, and their companies.Entrepreneurs are almost always on a quest to improve. But improvement can be ridiculously hard to accomplish on your own. That’s when an experienced coach can step in to help you focus on what’s most important, strengthen your teams, and transform as a leader. Laurie Fuller does all that … and more, sharing her insights and tried-and-true techniques to help entrepreneurs tackle their most difficult challenges. After a successful career in the private sector, Laurie Fuller channeled all her experience, passion, and curiosity into coaching. Today she’s a certified executive coach with Stanford Seed based in Nairobi, Kenya, a venture investor, and mentor to founders and CEOs across multiple continents. Fuller believes that being a sounding board is a critical part of coaching, whether her clients are talking about strategy, people, management issues, strategic HR, or just being lonely at the top. “This time that I have with my client is a way to reflect, remove ourselves from the business, and try to see the forest from the trees. Often as a leader, we get pulled into the urgent and we don't have time for the important,” she says.Questions to Ask When Considering a CoachDo they have the right credentials? “It’s easy to write ‘coach’ on a plaque, put it on the door, and open for business,” Fuller warns.Is it the right fit? Fuller recommends having a trial period and trusting your gut. “If it’s not working, you should politely move on,” she advises.Is the timing right? “If there's a lot going on in your life, personally or professionally, it just may not be a good time. Coaching takes a lot of mental energy and you want to be present,” she says.Are you willing to do what it takes? Fuller says that coaching also requires a lot of the “coachee,” so before you commit, make sure you’re willing to commit.More Masterclass Takeaways Beware of the evil letter I.  Fuller often stops clients when they say “I” and asks: “Do you really mean ‘I’ or do you mean ‘we’? Remember, it’s not just about you, it’s about your business.”Coaches and therapists are very different. There are limits to what a coach can accomplish. “I'm not trained as a therapist. I'm trained as a coach. I'm really focused on work, work behaviors, and how you present yourselves to others at work, in a work situation,” Fuller explains.Teams need coaching. If you want high-performing teams, you need to give them coaching, too.Delegate the things that drain you. Fuller uses the term “emotional runway” to get entrepreneurs to think about what parts of the business excite them so they can focus and add more value.Learn to say no. You’ve earned the right. Fuller says, “We need more entrepreneurs to really have that confidence to say, ‘This doesn't serve me anymore.’”It always takes longer than you think. Fuller encourages her clients to reflect on the progress they’ve made, not the end goal. “It always takes longer than you think to make change,” she says.Listen to Fuller’s insights, advice, and strategies for how to find a coach and make the most of the coaching experience.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Taking a Stand with Your Brand: Genderless Fashion in Africa
06-06-2023
Taking a Stand with Your Brand: Genderless Fashion in Africa
In Africa, as in the rest of the world, gay rights is a deeply divisive issue and queer people often face discrimination and violence. Wandia Gichuru, CEO of Vivo Fashion Group, and Chris Makena Muriithi, CEO of BOLD Network Africa, decided they wanted to do something about it using their collective strengths in business, fashion, advocacy, and storytelling. The Zoya X BOLD collection is about more than creating fashion for the queer community — it’s about starting a conversation about inclusivity and acceptance and welcoming everyone to the table.Saying you’re a socially conscious business is a lot easier than actually being one. That’s what Wandia Gichuru learned from Chris Makena Muriithi, whose organization BOLD Network Africa advocates for LGBTQ rights. When the two met — online and, ultimately, in person — they talked and talked. And then they took action, creating an entirely new product line for the queer community.“Fashion is a big thing for LGBTQ culture,” Muriithi explains, but clothing brands aren’t exactly serving the market. It was a perfect opportunity for Gichuru, whose Vivo Fashion Group had already built a business catering to the unique needs and preferences of African women. Educating and engaging Vivo employees was a key first step. “If we're going to do this, we don't want to do it just as a PR exercise so we can tick the box,” Gichuru says. “Can we figure out why we're doing it and why it matters, so that as an organization we learn from this and we become more accepting?” While Gichuru wanted to take a stand, she also wanted to respect her staff, many of whom were very religious. She told them, “I'm not going to force you to work on this but I want you to understand why we're doing it.” With pride, she recalls, “Literally everyone stayed on the project. No one, no one left.”As a former journalist, Muriithi saw that queer stories were never told with the decency they deserve. So, storytelling is a key pillar of BOLD’s advocacy work, and also of the Vivo collaboration. “Most of the stories that were told were negative. Yet we have such powerful stories about queer people who are doing well, who have businesses, who have been able to tackle life in many different shapes and forms. So for me, that was very, very important, just to be able to shed a positive light on the queer community in Africa,” he explains.While profit wasn’t the team’s first priority, the collaboration has been a success by many measures. “The sooner people see the importance of just leading from love, accepting everybody for who they are, the better we are going to be as a society, as an economy,” Muriithi says. Gichuru elaborates, “In the long run it is going to make business sense because what you'll see is, in a world of increasing choices and a lot more competition, people will start making choices based on what they believe a brand stands for.”Listen to their inspiring journey — the risks, rewards, and reactions — and how their professional collaboration had a profoundly personal impact as well.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Strategy: It’s the Big Bets that Matter
16-05-2023
Strategy: It’s the Big Bets that Matter
Do you have a strategy? Or do you just have a plan? Understanding the difference and how to define and execute on both is essential to transforming your business. Abhishek Rungta, founder and CEO of INT, realized he had been running his business without a strategy for far too long. Hear his journey and gain strategic insights from Jesper Sorensen, professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, on why strategy is all about managing uncertainty.Abhishek Rungta started his IT business in 1997 while he was still in college. But 10 years in, he faced a familiar predicament for founders. “We didn’t have any focus. Anyone who sent us an email was a customer,” he recalls. He admits that most of his business decisions lacked real strategy and were instead led “by gut feeling, not by real research or discussion within the organization.” By 2008, he was losing customers and employees because there was nothing that truly differentiated his company from the competition.To grow his business he needed to be more than a low-cost provider — he needed a strategy to truly differentiate his business. “The way I look at it now is, what can I do which my competition will find extremely difficult to replicate?” Rungta explains.According to Professor Sorensen, most organizations associate strategy with planning and tend to focus more on logistics (the planning) than on the logic of the underlying theory or strategy.  “Strategy is mostly about the things that you can't control. So it's about what customers are going to want. What are your competitors going to do? Those are all things that you don't have any control over, so strategy is about managing all this uncertainty,” he says.Sorensen explains that strategy is fundamentally about making an argument and then coming up with assumptions that support it. And you need to include assumptions about how uncertainty is going to resolve itself so you can accomplish your goals.While it certainly didn’t happen overnight, Rungta eventually constructed a more complete strategic argument based on clear assumptions, namely the fact that clients valued speed over price and that regulated industries were ripe for targeting. And then he let those assumptions drive action.Sorensen reminds entrepreneurs that there’s no real way to future-proof your strategy. “I don't think there's any kind of pill you can take that will guarantee your success against all the changes that might happen in the future,” he says. “But what you can do is you can say, okay, when a change comes in, I can then think about, well, does this impact the logic of my strategy or not?”Listen to Rungta’s strategic pivot and leadership journey for what he calls his “25-year-old startup.” And get advice from Professor Sorensen on how to construct your own strategy and examine the assumptions that matter most.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Executive Coaching: From Self-Doubt to Self-Awareness
25-04-2023
Executive Coaching: From Self-Doubt to Self-Awareness
Entrepreneurs aren’t meant to solve all their business problems alone, but all too often they try. Kunaal Rach, CEO of Healthy U, was no exception … until he met Laurie Fuller, a certified business coach, who transformed his leadership—and his business. Hear from both coach and coachee on how coaching can help provide the strategic, moral, and emotional support every entrepreneur needs.Kunaal Rach left Kenya at the age of 13 to attend boarding school in England and says he really had no intention of returning. But one emotional call from his mother—the founder of Healthy U—changed everything. He quit his job in finance the next day and returned to Kenya in 2014 to help her run the family business, a retail and distribution chain for health and wellness. Fast forward to 2019 when Rach became the CEO, with big new plans to grow and scale the business. Looking for a quick fix, he turned to a coach to provide the structure he felt was lacking in the organization. “I always thought that a coach would be there just to help me with my business and that was it. I thought that they would come in and, with their expertise, they would tell me this is what's wrong with your business and let's implement and let's execute and let's move on,” he remembers.Laurie Fuller dispels myths like this from the get-go. As a certified executive coach with Stanford Seed based in Nairobi, Kenya, and a mentor to founders and CEOs across multiple continents from all kinds of industries, she immediately tells her clients that she’s a coach, not a consultant who is going to do the work for them. “A coach is really a collaborator, a connector, a cheerleader, and really focused on being able to support you. But we're not actually producing those deliverables that a consultant would,” she explains.According to Fuller, entrepreneurs often blame their teams for their business problems instead of looking inward. But she advises them to “hold the mirror up to yourself first. Let’s understand what we can do differently. Then we can go to others and ask them to do the same.” When Rach held up that mirror, he didn’t like what he saw. And that became the starting point for his coaching journey.Trying to fill his mom’s very large shoes led to self-doubt. But having Fuller in his corner gave Rach the confidence to keep going. “She kept me honest, she kept me on the path, and she kept telling me to keep persevering and that change is tough at the beginning, messy in the middle, but beautiful at the end. You just have to keep going, but you'll get there eventually,” Rach recalls.Fuller explains that coaching isn’t a solo endeavor or a quick fix. It’s a long-term journey that gains strength with the involvement of the entire team. She says, “Many of my clients, when they go through this journey, they understand that being a leader isn't how much they've accomplished, but it's who they have become as a person. And that's the change in mindset that moves things.”Listen to Rach and Fuller describe how coaching can be transformative for both the entrepreneurs and the coaches who help them succeed.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Pivot, Adapt, Grow: Building a Fashion Brand in Kenya
04-04-2023
Pivot, Adapt, Grow: Building a Fashion Brand in Kenya
Starting a business is hard enough. But growing it can be exponentially harder — especially when crossing borders and continents and in a business as fickle as fashion. Wandia Gichuru is experiencing it all as founder and CEO of Vivo Fashion Group, based in Nairobi, Kenya. Gichuru thinks about her business beyond simply selling clothes. We can be “warriors for economic growth,” she explains. Hear her story of lucky breaks and quick pivots, strategic growth and purposeful passion.Wandia Gichuru began her career in international development. Today, she sees her business in a similar light, and with even more passion. She believes the fashion industry has the potential to transform economies on the African continent because, as she explains, “They haven’t found a way for robots to stitch clothing. You need to hire people.” And, she continues, “It's not just the people behind the machines, it's also the designers, the cutters, the bundlers. It's the models, the makeup artists, the photographers. There's just an entire industry that I believe could contribute a significant percentage to our GDP.”When Gichuru started her business, it was focused on selling dance and fitness clothing online to meet her own needs. Ultimately — by default, not design — she chanced upon a huge gap in the market: good-looking, comfortable, well-fitting clothes for African women’s body shapes and sizes. Luckily, she had a built-in focus group to identify customer needs. “When ladies spend an hour in your store trying on 20, 30 different things, they talk a lot. That's where we got our market research,” she says.She began by importing clothes from Asia, but quickly pivoted to designing and producing locally. “The local fashion industry had become almost nonexistent. We got flooded by all the secondhand stuff. And so the local textile mills that existed in the ’70s and ’80s, one by one, they all shut down,” she explains. The production move was a big decision that not only differentiated her brand, but also improved her bottom line and impacted her community. After seven years, Gichuru had six stores and 70-plus employees. But, she admits that she didn’t have a proper strategy, an effective board, or the right systems and processes to truly scale. She admits, “I was completely overwhelmed.” Gichuru got help from the Stanford Seed Transformation Program, a 10-month program for CEOs and founders of established businesses in Africa and South Asia to help them grow and scale their companies. “One of the first things we did was the business model canvas, which asks you to articulate your value proposition and answer key questions like who are your customers? Who are your suppliers? What is your marketing? What are your channels?,” she reflects. This exercise gave Gichuru the start she needed to build a foundation for expansion. Today, Vivo has 20-plus stores, has expanded to Rwanda, and has plans to grow across East Africa — and one day, hopefully, across the Atlantic.“I would love Vivo to get to that level. I think for so long, you know, people see Africa as a place you get your raw materials from and then you do your value add somewhere else, and then you either sell it back to us or wait till you use it and send it back here as a used thing. I just think we need to prove to ourselves and to the rest of the world that we're just as capable, and actually we can come up with solutions, products, and services that people outside of Africa will benefit from and need as much as we do,” she says with passion.Listen to Gichuru’s entrepreneurial story from startup to scaling and hear how she’s growing both her impact and her bottom line. Learn more about the business model canvas used in the Seed Transformation Program.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Short Takes: Sweet Success – Can you build an ice cream unicorn in India?
14-03-2023
Short Takes: Sweet Success – Can you build an ice cream unicorn in India?
Meet Gaurav Khemani, CEO of Prestige Ice Creams based in Kolkata. Faced with COVID-19 shutdowns, a cyclone, supply chain pains, and more, Khemani believes personal and professional discipline will help make his entrepreneurial dreams come true. Hear about his  journey from a career at big retail companies to leading a small business that he hopes will soon become a billion-dollar company. Gaurav Khemani begins each day at 4 a.m., reading, writing, working out, and generally taking care of himself before heading into the office at 7 a.m. Those three hours are a strict routine and one of the keys to Khemani’s success as an entrepreneur. That discipline and commitment also extend to how he runs his business.After studying and working outside of India for 14 years, Khemani got the entrepreneurial itch at 35. So, he returned home, bought his father-in-law’s ice cream company, and quickly learned the differences and difficulties of running a small to medium-size business. “In a lot of cases it's about day-to-day survival as well as cash flow management, whereas in larger businesses, a lot of these things you take for granted,” he says. “And typically, with an MBA you specialize in either finance or marketing, etc. Whereas when you're running a medium-size business, you're managing the entire business. And that's a different mindset altogether.”On top of all the typical difficulties of running a business, Khemani also had to deal with the COVID-19 shutdown and one of the biggest cyclones in West Bengal that left him with a massive inventory of ice cream on the brink of melting. Khemani calls that time “a blessing in disguise,” giving him time to slow down, step back, and reassess his strategy. Khemani believes the secret to transforming his million-dollar ice cream company into a billion-dollar one comes down to discipline and execution. “We all talk about strategy, marketing, and the sexiness that comes with that,” he explains. But what’s most important to succeed, he says, is “the day-to-day operations, making sure the machines are running properly, the deliveries are getting done on time, good customer service, and product innovation.”  Hear how Khemani plans to get Indians to eat more ice cream and his strategies for achieving sweet success.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Short Takes: From Farms to Forks
21-02-2023
Short Takes: From Farms to Forks
Meet Delia Stirling, commercial director of Brown’s Food Co. in Nairobi. She and her team are on a mission to spark consumer demand for foods made from indigenous Kenyan crops. Hear how their efforts are also helping small family farms and educating consumers about the environmental, economic, and taste benefits of eating locally grown food.Delia Stirling has always been a foodie and entrepreneur. As a little girl, she sold ice cream at craft fairs, using a sleeping bag for insulation. And her family was the same, taking two cows and a little extra milk to make cheese, and then growing that company to become the largest cheese processor in the region. When Stirling returned from studying and selling real estate in the United States, she took over her parents' company and was hungry to make a difference. Creativity has been key to the company’s growth, and Stirling says, “It’s my superpower, and believing in the weird things I’m doing.” That creativity impacts everything from identifying ingredients and creating delicious, nutritious foods to solving challenges all along the value chain — from farmers to consumers. One of her key learning points was seeing her company as part of that value chain, rather than separate from it. This resulted in new ways of thinking. She explains, “As a food processor, we've started to look at ourselves differently, as a catalyst to not only be able to influence what the consumer's eating, and then be able to influence what the farmers are growing.”Stirling encourages entrepreneurs to believe in themselves and their ideas. “Sometimes you'll self-doubt that you think you're a little crazy. But those gut instincts and those ideas are really important. It's always good to get advice, but it's also getting it and putting it in context of what you know in your background,” she advises. Hear how Stirling is making an impact on farmers, consumers, and climate change — one crop and bite at a time.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Short Takes: Bringing Affordable Medical Imaging to Botswana
31-01-2023
Short Takes: Bringing Affordable Medical Imaging to Botswana
Meet Nita Bhagat, a hotelier turned owner of Village Imaging, a radiology practice in Botswana. Hear how her father’s struggle with cancer led her business in yet another new direction, one that now helps everyone in her country to get better, closer, faster health care.Nita Bhagat and her cardiologist husband came to Botswana from Zimbabwe in 2003 as economic refugees. With her life and career uprooted, she worked as a receptionist in her husband’s medical clinic. Bhagat got an immediate education in Botswana’s health care system, which uniquely provides free care to all citizens. She learned that since there were no MRI machines in the country, the government was forced to send (and pay for) patients to go to South Africa to get the care they needed. Bhagat seized the opportunity and opened the first MRI scanning facility in her new home.Entrepreneurs often create new business opportunities when faced with a personal need or crisis. For Bhagat it was her father’s cancer diagnosis. Although Bhagat’s father could afford the best treatment in Botswana, it wasn't necessarily available with only one radiation oncology center in the entire country. “Every time he was having treatment, he kept saying to me, ‘Why aren’t you doing this?’” she remembers. Bhagat eventually took her father’s advice to open a radiation oncology center based in the community, not a hospital, so patients can get back home sooner and feel better psychologically. Hear how Bhagat’s caring heart and business mind are driving her business in new directions to meet the needs of Botswanans and her vision to bring life-saving treatments to neighboring countries in Africa.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.