Book Review: "The One Minute Entrepreneur - The Secret to Creating and Sustaining a Successful Business" by Ken Blanchard, Don Hutson and Ethan Willis.

Through a classical story of a dream pursued, The One Minute Entrepreneur highlights the pillars of establishing a successful startup. The 150-page book, written in palatable prose easy to consume in one sitting, serves as a standard cheat sheet for anyone seeking to build a sustainable entrepreneurship venture.  

Besides being on my ‘to read’ list for more than 5 years now, its size also allowed other urgent goals to be achieved during this brief and busy February. It has been quite a hustle getting a hardcopy of the book, both on the street-book vendors and the major bookshops in the country. I opted for kindle.

The One Minute Entrepreneur breaks the complexities of successful startups and entrepreneurship. Unpacking the attributes of a successful entrepreneur, the power of the mastermind group, and the importance of vision and money.

Truly, the gems in life come from short meaningful insights and not from long diatribes, and so will this review. 

I give this small book a full-star 5/5 rating and recommend it to anyone in who is thinking of starting a business, rethinking their existing business or anyone who wants to discover and maximize their entrepreneurial strengths. 

Book Review: "EDGE OF CHAOS: Why Democracy is Failing to Deliver Economic Growth –and How to Fix it." By Dambisa Moyo

Edge of Chaos diagnoses the perils of liberal democracy, the once greatest engine of growth, and the challenges it is facing in delivering its imperative mandate,  Economic Growth.

This is my first read of Dr. Moyo’s writings and she shares a contrarian and insightful thinking in the economic tensions and complexities of the contemporary world. Though she holds a Doctorate in Economics from Oxford and not in Politics, as she aptly put in the beginning of the book, she believes that the latter is the key driver for growth and prosperity of the human race.

Replete with statistics, history and research covered in eight chapters of the 269-page book, global themes cutting across international affairs like inequality, globalization, trade and sustainable development were of great interest to me. Well, there is more you can get from the challenges to democracy presented as the Hurricane Headwinds to the economic development. However, the underscoring point to take home is that the economic choices are at the core of politics.    

I couldn't help relating the book directly to the current Kenya political and economic situation. The debt crisis. Infrastructure challenges. Unemployment and income inequality.  Case in point, an extensive research of over 200 years by Harvard University professors titled Growth in a Time of Debt. The research says, “When external debt reaches 60 percent of the GDP, annual growth declines by about two percent.” This book was published one year before the IMF estimated the Kenyan Public Debt to GDP ratio as 59.9% (significantly above the 50% cap Kenya had set for itself) and followed by cutting the economic-growth forecast by 0.2% late last year,  according to Bloomberg. With the peculiarity of the Kenyan politician, the government approved to plan to present the debt limit in absolute figures instead of a percentage of the gross domestic product. The National Treasury proposed a limit of 9 Trillion shillings. That is USD86 Billion, almost the size of the entire Kenyan economy. Indeed no human is limited.

A scrutiny in sustainable development demands a check in at least the quality of education, income inequality, and total factor productivity. Subtle but significant shifts from what was the economic powerhouse has limited democracy in delivering such in three ways: One, the changes in the economic ideologies from largely state centric to a more laissez faire capitalism. Two, the rise of 24-hour news cycle as well as the advent of social media and, three, power shifting away from the state towards non-state actors such as corporations and wealthy philanthropists that are taking the role of the governments, thus weakening the state in the process. Churning of ill-equipped work force to the economy has nothing to do with the academia but everything to do with the government’s policy and its interest in education. It is this outsourcing and privatizing of core responsibilities like health, education and policing by the government to the wealthy private sector that has us on fast reverse at the edge of the precipice.

We have embodied in education, business and the democratic political system a predilection for short termism. A myopia that is detrimental to the economic success. In The Perils of Political Myopia, my favourite chapter, it is clear that the politicians are rewarded for pandering to voters' immediate demands and desires to the detriment of growth over the long term. To this thought, I see where Competency-Based Curriculum and BBI falls. Incitement of the public by politicians to demand for necessities like proper roads. I also see the betting companies promised ‘better’ terms a few months to the general election.

Only 41% of the general population trusts the government, a 2017 Edelman Trust Survey says. People are more skeptical of the ability of the democratic governments to act effectively as citizens in emerging markets see authoritarian leaders as more trustworthy than democratic politicians. Among the 10 solutions that Dr. Moyo suggest as The Blue Print for New Democracy, encouraging election of non-career politicians – those who have a sound working experience in non-political fields, making voting mandatory and a focused voter education. Voters are ultimately responsible for the politicians they elect (by voting or not voting) and the economic policies those politicians make.

To me this is a great blueprint. A sign of a gathering storm. How growth in the 21^st century is interconnected globally. She states, “America’s unsteady economy helped catapult Trump into the US presidency…The growing economic and political uncertainty across the globe is today being amplified as much by the Trump administration’s foreign policy choices as it is by America’s economic fortune.  A more isolationist America creates a vacuum at a time when the European Union has grown precarious, facing escalating extremism among the anti-Europe leftwing and the rightwing populist parties in the disintegration of the Eurozone. An aggressive Russia, fractious Middle East, rising terrorism spawned by religion and the risk of expanding nuclear and cyberwarfare capacities, all threaten to worsen as the United States ceases to serve as the stabilizing force.  Virtually every region around the world is vulnerable to security risks because of the economic situation of the United States.” I would not agree more.

You will find the research findings inhere interesting, you may want to poke holes in some of them, but the measured judgement with which she present the ideas are also interesting and thought provoking. As an exciting read and the first book to finish and review (my first review 😊) in 2020, I rate Edge of Chaos a 4/5 star. Just because I believe there is more to come, more to explore, more to discover.

I Seek Sound

Let me hear that sound

Soundness of health

With a heart that beats with love

For life

With life

That doesn’t wear midway.

Grant me the soundness of mind

Confoundment free

With all wit there is

With deft

To glide all way through.

I seek a sound soul

With self to be at peace

To always feel

And enjoy the breeze

And the clouds to see

From whence all come from.

Though I seek not

To align Your will to mine

But

That you harmonize mine to Yours

And let me accept it.

ThrowBack

When I look back
I smirk
At how much I put on the rack
Imitations of stuff I had to
pack
My stay home when mates were in the parks
And silence I shared when friends were back.

I smirk
At how my folks toiled their backs
Everything they ever had racked
To ensure my future never suck
And my studies not again in the dark.
Sometimes when I look back
I want to throw up.
But I can't throw up
After all they gave up
So that they can see me on my way up
And I'll ever ever walk with my head up
Until who is Up
Says my time's up.
When I look back
I'll smirk
But I'll never throw up
I'll never give up
I'll ever toughen up.

©Olegamba™ 2016.

Purity

Watching you
Dexterously moving
Each step clutching
Acceptably onto the earth
Chin held high
Beautiful harmonious voice
Deeply intellectually engaged
Saccharine contagious laughter
No small talk
True gift to nature
Truly gifted by nature
Purity!

The long spongy fuchsia hair
Pouring freely onto your
shoulders
Canvasing your gold-bearing complexion
Glowing from the shining sun
Radiating your beauty
By each striking ray
Purity!

Marking your territory
With your hourly-glassed shadow
With your cologne
Leaving the air redolent
Rich scent
Breathtaking
All breath in
All breath held
Deep
Purity!

Notice the favourable winds
Only blowing your way
With Purity
Approving your beauty
Gently caressing,
Intimate
Through your mane
A conspiracy of nature-
Perfect strength of breeze,
Air so clean,
Grass so green,
Fit so jean,
Heart's only scene,
Prettiest smile I've seen,
Truly yo queen,
Purity!

©Olegamba 2016.

Please Reply..

I’ve had this feeling

One too many times

Always feeling alone

On the other end of the tug

Of a war am willing toil

And a company I die to tag

Longing with a deep heart

For you alone I desire

My eyes staring blankly

To the echoes of my vacant heart

Filled with this emptiness

Of your banging discordant silence

Someone please tell him

I have seen the blue ticks

With bundles of hope online

I hope to catch his eye

For an ever lasting scene

As with a vague reply

Will assure me a chance

And dry my soaking eyes

Please say something

My eyes are wetting

My eyes are waiting.

©Olegamba 2016.

My Fast Lady

I long yet for another tryst

Not wanting to give up and ready for every twist

Hoping this time round we shall be lost together

Basking, snuggled, spread under the beauty of the sky

Wide open blue or pitch dark with starred holes.

I know this may not be the right time

Maybe we should allow first some things to rhyme

But has there ever been a right place and time for anything?

Trying both to be myself and not losing you

I long yet for another tryst.

I always want to be in charge

Then enclosed in frisson wary of moving in surge

Opting instead to approaching gingerly

But in your eyes you want me to be reckless

I know this may not be the right time.

I strongly hold deep down, this feeling is mutual

Though with silence all may be neutral

The moment seem auspicious to break the ice

Because I don’t believe we met just to leave in silence

I always want to be in charge.

I know others have tried but haven’t last long

And you are hoping I sing just one line of the song

As we both understand the absurdity of our love

That cannot be reified in only a few lines and quotes

I strongly hold deep down, this feeling is mutual.

I can’t help waiting sharing that spark

With deep and long intercourses of intellect we’ll spike

Molten repartees and affinity that will never abridge

A rarity that doesn’t usually accompany your beauty

I know others have tried but haven’t last long.

With the speed of a bullet my lady shifted

Whilst all I believed for me she was sifted

What bounteous wisdom that springs freely and promptly of her

Which deprives the perfect replies that only come when she's gone

I can’t help waiting sharing that spark.

As the chemistry builds our time is short

It moves so fast I feel like I’m shot

My heart growing weary, an augury that we wouldn’t catch up

Silencing my love with purity of sadness

With the speed of a bullet my lady shifted. 

©Olegamba 2016.