Nature of Business in Cameroon & Africa Dr Javnyuy Joybert on The Agenda MMP TV

so [Music] baby [Music] [Applause] welcome to the agenda with me lasha kinsley in dweller cameroon on today's edition of the program we are talking innovation sustainability and uh business productivity with a coach and of course uh he is a consultant and social innovator business and productivity speaker trainer and consultant with over 11 years i mean 11 years of experience in 15 african countries are moving around talking to business executives dr jeffny joybe talks to the agenda stay with us i'll be right back after this [Music] [Applause] [Music] dr jaffni joy bae thank you so much for honoring our invitation to be part of this edition of the agenda thank you so much and it's so good to finally be here to talk on the agenda it's a pleasure of having you doctor and you move around you talk for a living let me put it that way and you have been talking for over 11 years moving around the african continent talking to business executives and how has the experience been you know talking to people in a kind of business uh ecosystem that is regarded as difficult and strange yeah you know we we are in a um in a strange dispensation across the african continent and when you look at the last 10 years look at where we are right now and with the coming of coffee 19 that nobody really anticipated and looking at the various researches done by the world bank african rural bank about where africa will be in the next 10 years by 2030 it is really a very interesting time to talk about business and of course young people have been rising tremendously to to to take advantage of of the business ecosystem if you look at the most valuable companies right now in africa they have been run by young people that started a few years back using technology so it's it's it's a lot of things are happening a lot of elements are happening and it's very interesting to watch how it has evolved in the last couple of years and equally a very uh young man at your age you started uh doing this where i mean for over 11 years now let's talk about uh you've been quoted by many as saying that most businesses in africa don't valorize data and for this reason growth and sustainability as well as continuity still a major problem within the bigger the business ecosystem in africa why is that many people still run businesses in africa from the place of emotions from the place of assumptions and from the place of just general observation but we are now in a dispensation whereby data is like a demigod for you to be able to run a business that will go places you need to understand how to use data acquire data analyze data and use that data to make important decisions and that's why we get to say that data is a new oil and if you look at the companies right now across the globe and even africa that are tremendously growing at a certain level they have understood the power of leveraging on data and managing data so so how indispensable how important is data to a company because most of the companies like you really put it don't even have archives they don't take keep the tracks of their business records and so it becomes very difficult sometimes when the founder of a company dies the company dies as well yeah yeah that is very very uh um popular across africa i did my research in a master's level on succession planning and family businesses in africa and that was a very big challenge because you get to notice that when a founder dies the company dies two weeks after or two months after the founder it's not because the business is not a good idea it is because as we rightly said data policies systems all of these things that make up a sustainable business they found that they not put it in place let me bring it down to the buy i'm selling right i was talking to one man i run a business that we talked about to buy himself and i was like uh mama your oldest child does she know where you buy things if you are sick right now and you need her to go buy things from your supplier can she go by the absence those little things but what if she has a system she has a book whereby she write the name of the supplier location and contact and if she is owing her or the supplier is owing her she write the balance there that's a simple system that can enable her to transfer the buy am selling business to the daughter so the ability to know how to develop policies and systems and maintain data it is so critical that is what makes companies in europe and america it's not as if these guys have two heads it's not as if they they they they have something different that got released upon them to do business better than not the difference is that these people have mastered the art of systems policies and data and it it is very powerful that's why i keep saying that in cameroon it takes more than money and a good idea to run a business it takes administration it takes management it takes leadership it takes system development and implementation to run a business we are we we are at uh within the context of the youth the international day in cameroon and most often our young people in the country they keep complaining that uh the terrain is so difficult it's not because of the things that you are saying what do you have to tell young people in in cameroon today when it comes to startups because we are focusing mostly on startups here as elia mentioned in my introduction yeah um you know let me start by saying that there's no perfect country because sometimes when we sit we feel as if the grass is greener on the other side and i have had the privilege to do work in other african countries and and and and be in the u.s for some time and be in europe for some time to do work when you also go there they have their own issues because sometimes people get to paint other countries if they are so amazing and they have no issues it's also they're so good at branding that their countries on the outside better than what we do yeah and their citizens get to defend their countries and i'm not saying that cameron is perfect we are not we have lapses in governance we have lapses in in business laws like for example in cameroon we don't have a business policy that protects startups immediately you receive a company you need to stop paying taxes which they should create something a policy that can protect startups because understanding so many policies are being created at the level at the level of ministry of youth but sometimes these youths they complain of lack of financing and when some of them who succeed to get the financing from the banks they disappear with their money they don't invest the money making trust to be i mean it's a two-sided um margin not only i've seen the government create programs and give money to young people to start poetry farms and do stuff and they take and they disappear too and they'll see them blame the government also so as i said it is the problem from the young people have issues that they need to sort out and the government has issues they need to sort out so we need to do our carried out responsibilities so that we meet on the same playing level because if young people keep blaming the government meanwhile honesty is a problem or they keep blaming the government meanwhile they don't have the right skills to get the job done there is a very big problem in that particular area and if the government is expecting more from young people without making sure that policies are in place and as you said there are sometimes good policies but we have a problem with a lot of civil servants and i think that's what the government is lacking in terms of having strong system to hold civil servants accountable to be able to discharge these particular policies sometimes you go to a government office and doing something you are the one inside this a policy that's only in law and they say no we have not received it and sometimes they cover it up because they are expecting bribes and for you to please them before they get to do that off and i think that's a very important missing piece in many african countries including cameroon where there should be a system that holds civil servants accountable in the work that they do okay and this is this fierce competition that's one of the reasons why most startups don't see the light of day as a business coach and an award-winning young entrepreneur what are some of your secrets you may want to share with our viewers if i tell you there's no longer a secret of course let's put it it's a secret but you when you tell us it will no longer be you know business it's interesting our viewers get to know how we've been able to strive in this very difficult and strange you know business ecosystem business people always face competition because as you see opportunities others will see opportunities also and as startups we need to be very good at identifying gaps one of the best ways that startups can be able to dominate in a market is for them to identify gaps and begin to fill those gaps because many times as a startup you don't have a lot of money like older companies you don't have a lot of staff a lot of assets like other companies one of the best ways that you can be able to compete with them is to find the gaps they're not able to fill in one good thing about startups that they speed if i want to do something my company right now i don't need to consult several departments or several board of directors and all of that i get it done immediately that's the benefit of small businesses and startups yeah and if we can and imagine a very big company um like a parastatal or a company that has two thousand employees they will need to follow if like a three months procedures before they finally implement a new product or even just to change a a product color from blue to black they will need to have board meetings and all of these things but we can decide and do that overnight and startups can capitalize on speed efficiency and their athletes to use technology better than older companies and be able to win in the market and one thing is to have a dominant mindset don't just be afraid don't just get in and you're like oh these guys are bigger than us be a dominant mindset and believe that you can produce a better product you earlier mentioned money or finance is it enough is money enough to guarantee sustainability of the business no money money is important in business but it's not the most critical factor there are people who have money they don't know what to do with it there are people that have i i worked with a client before he came to me he had 80 million francs as investments but when he meet me he had just about 12 million pounds but he had no ready product that he could market and put in the market so money is important but it is just one of the elements that makes a complete business model so many people get to say oh there's no money and all of that and sometimes i have an idea i don't have money those are just some popular excuses that we get to give ourselves i like to say that you don't need money to start a business but there are some people i'm not saying that you're one of those kind of coaches that tells you you know i started my business with a grain of granola and whatever so we will talk about money so yeah we're not talking about search search yeah as i was saying you don't need money to start a business you need money to grow a business because sometimes my ideas you know i'm talking about a grain of grass yeah what what you know it's also it's also very important yes there are people who have started small and have grown incredible businesses and if somebody says that i would have to advise you ask them the exact process they went through if you say you use one grain to do whatever tell me the process because this is about process yeah if there is no process trust me there's no business either you're hiding something or you're doing something illegal and trying to use a an ethical way to explain how you're making money okay i also know that you are currently doing a 15-day morning school program which starts from 4 a.m to 6 a.m prompt what is the motive behind this morning uh it's like you know you get up and you you feed people yeah with information in the morning yes what motivated you i i created this this this platform called the peak performance academy in in is to teach people the art of peak performance the art of being a high achiever and there are certain ways of living there are certain patterns of living that until you master them you may not be able to become a peak performer high achiever and one of those is to teach people how to conquer their comfort zones and that is why with my mentees and some clients i do business with i get to organize training sessions and coaching sessions on odd hours like i'm from 4 00 a.m 3 a.m sometime 12 a.m to teach you how to beat your sleep control your sleep should not control you because you cannot be a high achiever and you you sleep a lot you sleep maybe 10 hours nine hours and so on but meanwhile high achievers who have pretty incredible results are not sleeping that much number two it's not just about your sleep it's about teaching you how to control short-term enjoyment like you can be able to if you can control your sleep and focus on your career and your business you can be able to control your uh maybe how you love to drink alcohol and focus on important things just to teaching you those important habits that can help you kill some distractions and focus on important tasks in in your career and business so that's what you do exactly yes and then we get to teach some particular principles of success that people get to take and they apply in their businesses and sometimes bringing reports on how they applied in their businesses and the feedback from the businesses you're equally an author of at least five books in the market i want us to focus on this one this book where you talk about the title is from average to unforgettable yeah that one caught my attention can you throw more light on some of the chapters of the book yeah the first word give the background of why that book from average to unforgettable i wish there was a i wanted to use a more mean award but i i didn't want to because in primary school i was consistently last in class this is interesting how is that possible very possible and in secondary school in the cameroon system before you pass the examination and go to the next level you must have 10 average and above yeah i have never had 10 average i was always promoted on trial this is interesting now in the work that i do i am one of the best in the continent i have been paid as one of the best and i've been invited to place one of the best so i have become unforgettable to many companies to many clients even i work with governments to advise them on education skills and how to structure business ecosystems and policies so how what happened how did it happen were you able to beat that that is issue why the book that's why the book talks about from average to unforgettable there are certain things that i did within a period of about 10 years that changed the cost of my life and made me a better person and just to add i am not from a very good family as we may see and wonder what they call wet luck kids so i don't know my dad pc so my mom could barely see me off through school and i sponsored myself from bachelor's degree level to my doctoral degree level because my mom could not send me off through university so with all of these things i in my little short life i've been able to experience some things that even me i never thought i would ever experience so what can young people do in a country like cameroon and i did not school our country as all my education here so what can young people do that they can control we get to blame the government and blame our parents and blame things but there are certain patterns of life that you can control at your level that can change the course of your life that will always say fix yourself first before you blame somebody else and i believe that when you fix yourself fix your daily habits and patterns and certain things in your mindset some things start fixing themselves in your favor that's why the book is from average to unforgettable so those are those are some of the highlights so they are mainly yes of the things in the book yes yeah the book is also available yes the book is available online on amazon you can just go from average unforgettable you can buy anywhere in the world on amazon or you can just go to my website you can get it there um on seller.com and and you can get a

hard copy in any event i'm speaking doctor uh the most difficult challenge coaches face is uh change stereotypes to change stereotypes and so how do you enable the 21st century youth in cameroon using your success story like what you were just narrating you know it's very difficult to change mindset sometimes when you tell them they say oh these guys is just telling us stories and yeah he made his money and through the other way he wants to come deceive us tell us how have you been able to succeed in changing this kind of stereotypes it is i think one of the best ways that gets to work is getting closer to the people and that's why i believe in creating communities i have a lot of online communities for different reasons that bring young people closer to me and when you are closer to me you get to see maybe how i live life you get to see how i do things you got to see that there's nothing maybe i'm faking that uh it's not real you get a point and that way it makes it easy for young people to feel that they can be part of of the success story and sometimes one thing i get to teach them is that there's a place of time and process there's no overnight success it takes time it takes hard work it takes sleepless nights it's gonna cost you something so like for example last year a few years i did something where i selected a couple of my mentees and i said if you have been in business for two years and you have never made your first one million francs let us i want to work with you i selected six yeah and in that one year period i was teaching them something i was coaching them about hard work questioning about strategy teaching them about understanding the business laws and tax laws and finance laws just to learn certain things many times we blame a lot of failure stuffs around us meanwhile we have not taken time to pay attention to details that are important that we can use them for advantage and advance the course for our lives and most of these things are put in books yes i write a lot i can i write every morning read yes and don't read it especially young people yeah young people don't read and and people who are tired of their lives people who are who feel that you know i think that my way is no longer working they start looking for solutions to to their problems or solutions to their ineffectiveness and they start reading they start asking asking questions and you get to see that there's that change okay like for example this four a.m morning class that i do and sometimes that there are 100 people in class cameroonians you see so so there's a reawakening that people are looking for um to see that you know i think i i need to seek a better way of getting things done i thought i can have something better for my life and as i would like to say nobody's coming to help you and we need to realize that everybody has their own problem yeah nobody's coming to help you not even not even your uncle he he has some family and everything take care yeah you're waiting for help you need to take absolute responsibility for your life and when they realize that particular mindset it helps a lot and also like programs like this help to re-awaken people to teach them some basic things about life that can enable them to become better in what they do okay doctor uh archives and documentation of works by ceo and ngo is equally another issue that you have been hammering on in cameroon and uh it is still a very i mean a big problem in cameroon why is it so difficult for ngos and these ceos to document you know works that they do i i read some of your write-ups where you talk about um people not i mean owning websites or having uh social media i mean accounts that way they can i mean showcase their works for international uh community to see for for them to have opponents yeah um it is you may call it the play it is the issue of ignorance lack of skills and lack of understanding about certain things that are important in their lives and sometimes we somebody can have an idea in their house and then leave the house and go straight to implementation without really learning the basics that are critical so people based a lot on talent ideas talent and implementation but there are administrative stuff there are managerial skills there are essential skills that you need to master in the process and that's why we need to keep learning to understand what are those various tools that we need to practice in order to do the right things and we need to do that also for the future generation because many of us are struggling because there's no blueprint the people who get to meet it don't have a blueprint like let's take for example like some some of these big people names that we can you cannot go search about them and read oh this is how he made his money this is the process the lessons in this journey but you know you can read that you can read how how you get started you can read how it comes back to the data you were talking about i was talking about so sometimes we need to document this and also people get to feel as if uh when they document and share their success stories people are going to call them that yeah they are proud and all of that don't think about that i share a lot of my story and lessons because i know that people are reading and it's got an impact that's the only reason i get to share and i encourage any other person if you have been able to succeed in something we this generation our generation is is a disruptive generation there are a lot of things that our parents got it wrong yeah and we are the ones to correct it and in this generation we we are bridging the gap we our parents did not uh experience social media we did our parents we we experienced the part of sending letters uh by writing and then we have experienced a part of sitting here and sending somebody a message in the united states in four seconds so there's a lot of things that if we don't document that transition those lessons the impact and and and and a lot of these things the next people coming after us they will not understand certain things and what they can learn from us the documentation too is very important the kind of information we we put up there is another write-up you put on today i think it was at 4am that you you you put it out there and you were hammering so hard on the young people in cameroon who have seen tick tock and other social media platform as a place to go sell their body yeah or i mean expose their body on such platforms and we're hammering that they should be mindful because in some years to come the very things they are posting today might i mean play a lot on the negative they have become yeah yeah very true and you know there are many things that we did when we were much younger like in second school that we are not proud of and sometimes some some people are lucky because that time there was no social media it was not that rampant as it is today but now young people get to be half naked and all of that and and i think it's it's a problem of of self-esteem and many other things whereby they believe that you know it's a generation where people love attention right now they want to get likes and comments this generation but people have cars online and don't have cars offline generations will have jobs online and don't have jobs offline a lot of things are happening so they love that attention so and one of the best ways that especially for ladies to get that attention is to be half naked and you know as i always say there is no way you can build an incredible lifestyle that is not ethical it's not professional it it's always going to end up like if i give a scenario yes you can you can show off yourself right now because you're young and because you're beautiful of course when you start getting older the guys who are following you will look for a younger person and forget about you now what happens to you there's no sustainability but it's better you build a brand that's what i keep saying in branding there is a superficial brand and it's a sustainable brand many young people are building superficial brands and 10 years later that brand will not be able to put them on the right table because they as i said the internet never forgets whether you delete it you don't delete that that's why there are young women right now when they immediately they announce that they're engaged and about to get married i've seen a screenshot of what they did two years ago on instagram that's really some of them you see so because people start bringing those things up based on what they said what they did or how they behaved in public in a drinking parlor somewhere or in a nightclub somewhere and it now hunts them and when you start ascending a a superior position in government or in a private sector some things are going to haunt you you know some things can happen people can forgive and forget but the consequences will be there okay dr uh jeff new uh joy bae thank you so much for taking our time to be part of this edition of the program and we're glad uh you took off time from your busy schedule it's not been easy having you to be here you are leaving a conference you were delivering talks somewhere you had to i mean abandoned to come and talk to young cameroonians it's a pleasure having you sir thank you so much it's an honor to be here hope to see you some other time definitely [Music] so [Music] me [Music] [Applause] you

2022-02-23 18:58

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