Andrew Endovo Alovi is the Marketing Assets Manager at Coca-Cola Company’s Coke Studio in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Biggest Money Mistake: Looking back, my biggest money mistake so far has been to get comfortable with my salary and to depend on it entirely. This kind of reliance with a salary means that your fate is at the mercy of a corporate entity that could wake up one day and decide you aren’t needed anymore. Work for your employer from 8am to 5pm, and work for yourself from 5pm to midnight and over the weekends.
Biggest misstep: This has been a personal lesson. Five years ago, I travelled so much across the globe and worked daily. Before I knew it, my body was giving up and my daughter barely had a relationship with me apart from Skype. You should never forget to have boundaries. Know when to work, and when to rest and breathe and be with your family.
If I started all over again: I am a very impatient person and this has affected some of my work relations and output. If I was to start all over again I would be more graceful and patient with my work expectations as well as with the people I have worked with. We all do things differently and at different paces, what matters most is achieving the goal, and achieving it well in the right way.
Secret to building wealth: Partnerships have been my most effective way of making the extra shilling. I meet a good tailor, but they aren’t good at marketing their produce, so we partner together and I handle his marketing while he focuses on what he does best. This way, I don’t need to start up my own boutique as an investment. Instead, we join hands together and share the pie. Partnerships are great as long as greed doesn’t come in the way.
My saving method: My most effective way of saving is by lending. If I keep money in an account I will end up using it. So I lend it to someone and agree to receive it after a while, and this safeguards me from accessing it and using it. My kind of lending also includes making short-term investments in people’s businesses where I give them money, they trade with it over a period and bring it back with an agreed interest.
Lesson from my biggest milestone: I have come to learn that in life, it is important to be humble enough to learn if you want to go far. When I started managing Coke Studio over two seasons ago, my experience on managing productions was very limited. However, I was willing to learn from my boss. From this I have been able to successfully steer the Coke Studio project forward.
Secret to success in the corporate world: You will not go anywhere if you can’t demonstrate how relevant you are in an organization. People must be able to feel your presence and pin-point the value you add to the system for you to go far. Above all, I have come to learn that it is critical for you to have good relationships at the workplace. Always remember that companies are run by people, and it is people that like you and your work that will give you more and more opportunities.