Elizaphan Mouko is the Country Director and East Africa Business Head at Flutterwave Inc, a pan-African payment technology firm providing payment solutions to global companies with customers in Africa.
The business world is tough. More so if you want to rise through the ranks and put yourself on an executive path. If you’re ambitious and want to build a great career or business or wealth, it’s going to take hard work and lots of it, which includes self-discipline, work ethic, and consistent evolution. The good news is that all that hard work should pay off over time. The better news? There’s something else you can do to make your career or business path easier to navigate, more successful, and even more enjoyable. That something is building your own career or business advisory board. This board is a group of people in your industry—both seasoned professionals and contacts just a few years ahead of you.
Making financial choices out of fear or pressure is big trap. A while back, I invested in a business venture because my friend thought it would be the next big thing in town. The ventured backfired and I ended up losing all the investment. When it comes to money decisions, fear and pressure is the barrier that stops you from doing due diligence.
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We are often told to never put all eggs in one basket. This is not a cautionary cliché. A while back, we had a customer who was contributing up to 70 per cent of the revenue to our bottom-line. As a result, the company would go all out to please this customer without really taking into consideration the cost of ‘keeping the customer happy.’ One day this customer decided to walk away. His decision exposed our underbelly. It took more than six months for the company to regain its footing. Learn to diversify, lest your business teaches you the hard way. Regardless of how big a customer is, ensure that they don’t contribute more than a third of the revenue to your company.
At the start of my career, I used to think that I had to be nice. I should have said ‘No’ much quicker than I used to. Being nice is not always worth it. I am however humbled at the trajectory my career took. Through this firm, I have been part of a team that has built a payment infrastructure that offers a single API integration for cards, mobile wallets, ACH, QR, USSD payments. This has enabled instant and secure payouts into African bank accounts and mobile wallets at competitive rates. In three years, we have used this platform to solve pain points of over 100,000 African and Global Merchants which include Uber, eBay, Booking.com, FaceBook, Netflix, Transferwise, Sendy, Ripple, Zucchini, Copia Kenya among others.
I am a risk averse person and tend to go for investment methods that are safe. My savings are made up of a combination of unit trusts, shares, T-bills, fixed deposits and the expansion of my business ventures. Currently, I’m considering real estate as well.
All this talk about being an entrepreneur may have you thinking that everyone should be one. This is very far from the truth. People have different talents. Some talents apply to starting a company, while some are best for regular jobs. Have you seen the way people are raking in dollars through employment in this city? Technology is the new oil. With your smartphone you can create the best content in the world. Be an entrepreneur and an employee. The trick, I believe, is to have the talents of both an entrepreneur and an employee. Be in business even when you’re in employment, because once again, the bitter truth is; with an average salary of Sh. 50,000 per month in this economy, when will one be a millionaire?
This profile feature on Elizaphan Mouko was first published in the Saturday Magazine. The Saturday Magazine is a publication of the Nation Media Group.
