When I was in prison, visiting, an in mate came right after my presentation and said: “Mustapha I really appreciate your talk on in-mate reformation. But how do you advise a prisoner like me serving a jail term for a crime I never committed?”  The person in question was called James — a brilliant young man that had mishandled petty cash at the place of work to pay medical bills for his child. To him, he had not committed any crime. He was justifying his actions. This gives key pointers that in Uganda, majority of the people steal in order…

This is a new concept: “financial accident.’ I just called a colleague of mine who has been out of circulation. Me: “Sir, how are you? What happened, you are lost?” Ans: “Man, I am not fine. I got an accident.” Me: “Oh sorry, how are you doing. Which hospital are you?” Him: “In fact, I am at home. Feeling so low. This financial accident thing is horrible. I’ve low morale. I suddenly failed to get money, and it seems it is going to take long to come. The accident is becoming malignant.” Me: It’s tight. But please, don’t lock yourself…

Do you have one of the characteristics of poor leaders? You recruit a competent professional; after a series of interviews and competence assessment You give them a job description – over 5 pages of lists of what their activities will be And then you tell them how to do it If you do that, you are probably killing their creativity and innovation. Leadership is about setting clear targets – clarifying on outputs or performance indicators based on say balanced score card areas – FLIC – financial, learning & growth, internal business processes (innovation) and customer focus. e.g. Financial – Turnover…

If you are 25 years and more, you have probably spent the last 18 years investing in your technical skills. Going through nursery, primary, secondary and now University – trying to acquire a specialized degree. If you are lucky, you could have picked some great practical skills along the way. Skills like cooking, communication, leadership, planning, etc. How much money have you invested in your life or process skills? I am one of the folks with several international qualifications including an MBA. I realized rather late that technical skills are good but just. When it comes to career success, you…

Success is all about overcoming rejections and objections so much that if you see you are attaining success without significant objections, you should get worried. Something may be wrong somewhere. Before we go deep into understanding how to handle rejections, we need to know the types. What kind of rejection are you likely to face? Types of rejection Business sales rejections: Most of the time you are going to face rejections if you are approaching a wrong person. For example, you are sales person selling a product to a prospect you have not carried out any groundwork about. If you…

As a guerrilla marketer, your primary focus is to optimize business from existing customers. Your current customer is 8 times likely to buy another product or service from you than a new prospect. For this reason; guerrilla marketers focus their energy concurrently as follows: 65% focus on current and past customers 25% focus on prospects and new business – sell to individuals and market to groups 10% focus on the rest – universe. Success in sales and marketing is a result of deliberate actions. You must identify the 80% of your customers who bring the 20% of your revenue and focus to…