Kangai Mwiti

Entries from August 2008

The third thing I learned working with Seth Godin

August 22, 2008 · 1 Comment

Lead a tribe, fail, then try again

Tribes- We need you to lead us is set to be released in a couple of months. According to Seth,

Tribes are groups of people aligned around an idea, connected to a leader and to each other. Tribes make our world work, and always have.
The new opportunity is that it’s easier than ever to find, organize, and lead a tribe. The Web has enabled an explosion of all kinds of tribes — and created shortage of people to lead them. This is the growth industry of our time.
Tribes (the book) will help you understand exactly what’s at stake, and why YOU can and should lead a tribe of your own.

Interestingly enough, this summer the four in-house interns got a chance to practice leading a tribe. This tribe was made up of at least one hundred virtual interns from Australia, America, Japan, India, England, China, Germany and Kenya. The interns were given a summer project, and we were in charge of output, morale and handing out virtual mint-and-chocolate-chip M and M’s. It was hard, but we did it and I’m enormously proud of us. In just a few words, here’s what I learned.

  1. It’s scary, but worth it.
  2. Leadership can be learned. Try and try again.
  3. The world has amazing people out there who would be willing to follow you. Go find them.
  4. Tribes are full of people who have ideas. Tribes are also full of people who won’t implement those ideas.
  5. Having a hidden chocolate cupboard is essential for the general well-being of a tribe.
  6. Finding a way to enable your tribe of fans to talk to each other and to potentially new ones is extremely mandatory to your future.
  7. Whoever is leading the tribe with you matters a lot. A whole lot.
  8. If the growth of your tribe is scalable, then in ten years you’ll have enough time to take a year-long vacation.
  9. It takes a lot of courage and self-confidence to learn how to follow when most of what you’re used to is leading.
  10. Read the book.

Do it. Fail. Let people down. Scrape yourself off the sidewalk and get up. Find more people who believe in you and then repeat the process.

Categories: Marketing
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The second thing I learned working with Seth Godin

August 18, 2008 · Leave a Comment

Present quickly- get to the point

It’s an art.

We as Africans are known for our long-winded explanations, chock full of rhetoric extravagances, paradoxical expressions, grandiose statements and a few onomatopoeia’s thrown in. Kind of like that. Plus we like to use big words like grandiloquent and impecunious, disregarding the fact that our audiences may not really care or even have that much time on their hands.

In fact big and impressive didn’t work quite well for me, especially since my esteemed audience member curved out five precious minutes of his busy day to listen to what I had to say. I realized that simplicity works very very well under pressure. Wonders, in fact. So here are a few things I consider when presenting my ideas to an interested party, and all I’ve got is five minutes of their precious attention. You’ve probably seen them before, but it bears reiterating.

  1. Pre-Presentation preparation (the easy part):
    • Why do you want to do this?
    • Who is- your interested party? your intended target? your minion? Why?
    • What is- your main point? your remarkable product? your four-week goal? Why?
    • When will you start? finish? continue? pause? halt? push? pull? Why?
    • Where will you get, host, store and/or sell this magnificent product/project/thing that you’re pitching? Why?
    • How will you know you’ve finished?
  2. Presentation
    • How much time do you have?
    • What’s your main point? (3 sentences or less)
    • Everything else (10 sentences or less)
  3. Post-presentation preparation (the hard part)
    • As always, due to the lack of adequate preparation before the presentation, re-group and re-strategise, cutting out what isn’t important, or what’s slowing you down

Then, go on and re-present your presentation in 13 sentences or less. W00T!

If that doesn’t work, then take a look at Seth’s Frequently Asked Questions, find the answers then present again.

Categories: Marketing
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The first thing I learned working with Seth Godin

August 15, 2008 · 2 Comments

Create your own thing, sell it then run with it (and don’t look back)

Squidoo is the internet’s best platform for sharing your knowledge and passion with the world. With Squidoo you can easily create a free webpage (or a lens) on any topic in the entire world, from where to get tennis balls for your dog to chew on, to a pretty detailed history of Michaelangelo’s David. The site enables you to even sell stuff from eBay and Amazon, with part of the proceeds going to you, or to your favorite charity. Very cool.

For the past three months I’ve had the unique opportunity of spearheading a strategy I created for one of site’s the twenty-odd lens categories. Suffice to say it was a very well-thought out strategy, with daily, weekly and monthly goals. It was so simple, so easy to do, and the results were to be astounding- totally and completely astounding.

After an in-depth discussion with Seth about it, I learned that there’s so much more that goes into a strategy than what I thought at first. In short, a strategy is:

  1. Focused- if you can’t summarize it in 3 sentences or less, then it’s not much of a strategy
  2. Filled with metrics, metrics and more metrics- how will you measure that you’ve gotten to where you wanted to go?
  3. Doable- this is simple, really. Can you do it?
  4. Scalable- if it gets big, will you be able to leverage your time doing it?
  5. Not succumb-able to peer pressure- it’s not there to make anyone else happy (apart from your boss, of course)

After re-drafting and re-discussing, I ran with it. I emailed bloggers, signed up a few to create lenses, created more lenses and started the process over again. In other words, I tried to do what I thought I could do and after a few weeks, I noticed something. It wasn’t working. My results were abysmal, and showing up at work every day started becoming a little difficult. My strategy was a complete and thorough failure.

So I did the worst thing anyone in this position can do. I looked back. I looked at my short, blemished and fumbling performance and actually asked myself why I was picked. What was Seth thinking? Why did I have to fly so far and sacrifice so much to come and spectacularly and fantastically fail? Why did I pick that stupid category? Why did I not pick the easier one? Why was everyone else having such a great time with theirs? Did I think that I’d be such a superstar in a world where superstars are normal? Their superstars are super-comets! Freaks of nature! Remarkable and outstanding people who can do anything they put their minds to. Me- I was just a fumbler.

My advice- never look back. It’s the worst decision you can make. Why? because you remind yourself of all your failures, and what they mean to everyone else. Looking back just reminds you of how badly you can do if you just do a bad job. It’s the worst feeling in the entire world. So don’t, under any circumstance, even under the pain of torture look back. Keep going. Fail, slow down, even stop for a second or two then pick yourself up and do it again. Do it again until you succeed. Ran with it. Don’t stop. Because if you look back, chances are you’ll be mesmerized by how utterly and audaciously you failed.

On the sunnier, greener side, what was most important was that I started. I did something. My takeoff has been slower than most of my colleagues, but I’m still going on. Although my goals have not yet been reached, I’m not where I began three months ago. And I’ve learned something about marketing that they won’t teach me in Customer Relations 101. I’ve learned how to create something, how to sell it and how to ran with it.

And don’t look back!

Categories: Marketing

Smile at the camera. Flash!

August 15, 2008 · 1 Comment

Every once in a while, as you’re walking about minding your own business, you notice them. The tell-tale signs are clear- big backpacks, safari boots, tan crew socks, brown shorts baring hairy (or smooth) pale legs, scruffy tees, sun hats, ripe body odour and bright pink faces burned from exposure to the unforgiving African sun. What’s even more refreshing to see is the pent up excitement that lights up their peeling faces like the New York new year’s eve ball. Yes people, I’m talking about Nairobi’s favourite accessory after the Bata Bullet.

I’m talking about The Tourist. The man or woman who travels thousands of miles clutching a Nikon D300, Malaria-Gone, SPF89 suntan lotion and the latest Learn Swahili In A Day book. Eagerly they practice their new-learned greetings on unsuspecting, then awe-struck Kenyans, not that we mind one bit. It’s actually refreshing and utterly interesting to see internationals gape in awe at our advanced stages of life, from moving vehicles to actual buildings, and even to speaking their languages.

What amuses me is this- even though The Tourists may seem mildly irritating to some, we would not hesitate to acquiesce to play a part in their touristic rituals. If a group of tourists asks you to stop what you are doing, take their big D300, endure five painful seconds of being taught which button to push, push it, switch places with one of the tourists, smile at the camera, say “cheese”, wait for the flash, endure never-ending ah-sana-te sana’s and walk away hoping to see yourself on their website one day, you undoubtedly will feel really good about yourself. You just spent five minutes of your day making someone else happy. You just spent five minutes of your day really showing the world who you really are. You just spent five minutes of your day representing your country. And one day, when The Tourists’ friends are oohing and aahing over the pictures, they will remember the short girl who stopped, took their picture, laughed at their jokes, helped them learn a new Swahili word and just went on their way. “Those Africans… such nice people” they will say.

The flip side is this- being a tourist isn’t the easiest thing a business can do. But being a tourist is what most successful businesses do today. They search for a new adventure. When they find it, they arrive and take a look around in awe at their surroundings. They learn the new languages and practice them on unsuspecting natives. Then they go on safaris, use SPF89 lotion and still get burned. Then they hit the streets taking pictures while stopping complete strangers to convince them to learn something new. Afterwards, they tell everyone else back home what a great time they had. In return, their businesses hit new levels of growth that astound them. Their next step- they find a new adventure.

Question: Are you a tourist, or an unsuspecting native?

Answer: You’re never going to be a tourist if all you do is smile at the camera and wait for the flash.

Categories: Marketing
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What I learned working with Seth Godin

August 14, 2008 · Leave a Comment

After three and a half months working with Seth Godin at Squidoo, here are the top ten things I learned.

  1. Create your own thing, sell it then run with it (and don’t look back)
  2. Present quickly- get to the point
  3. Lead a tribe, fail, then try again
  4. Freely express yourself- it gets you nowhere if you don’t
  5. Be an expert at being remarkable
  6. Generosity is the mother of invention
  7. Free ideas are the coolest ones
  8. If well cooked, tofu can be an alternative source of protein
  9. Drip Drip Drip…
  10. Balance is extremely important! (time and other wise…)

Stick around… I’ll expound on them one by one.

Categories: Marketing

Get planted

August 13, 2008 · Leave a Comment

One of the most difficult aspects of living in New York was getting planted and firmly rooted in the city. Three and a half months is short enough to not miss the comforts of home that much, but still long enough to feel out of the loop, so to speak.

The biggest challenge was getting planted in a Christian church much like my own funky and cool one back home. Mavuno Church is the coolest, funkiest and downright fantabulousest church in Nairobi today. I have the ongoing privilege of being able to attend every Sunday service and be blessed by the Truth of the Word, spoken by God’s mighty and ordained men and women. To that end, please take a look at Pastor M’s blog.

After being encapsulated in this atmosphere for over 18 months, it did not occur to me that there’s no church like Mavuno in the greater New York city area, unless you count the upwardly mobile black pentecostal temples in Harlem, Brooklyn and Queens where the word is drowned by the wailing and flailing of church members who received words from the Lord himself. Not my type of thing, really.

Enter Get Planted- Mavuno Church’s placement program where any Mavunite traveling internationally will be planted in a church whose mission, vision, teachings and atmosphere is generally similar to Mavuno’s. Where a traveling student can find a place to stay for at least a week before transitioning into college life abroad. Where a traveling business person can find contacts, and still retain the fire burning inside. Where traveling families on holiday can find a place to take their kids for Sunday School. And vice versa…

The ideas are endless… Pastor M.- we should talk!

Categories: Marketing
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A baffling situation

August 10, 2008 · Leave a Comment

People are talking about you. What are they saying?

A few months ago, I had the spectacular chance of treating the main man to lunch and a movie. Figuring that since it was a public holiday, and that it was also a Monday, and that movie theaters normally had a Monday promotion going on, it wouldn’t break my student budget too much. So we put on our going-out gear and headed to the movies.

In Kenya, it’ll cost you around $6 to watch a movie on a Monday, and they’ll even throw in a free hotdog, coke and popcorn. However, if a public holiday happens to fall on a Monday, and you happen to be in an altruistic mood, it’ll cost you $8.50 and they’ll take away the free hotdog, coke and popcorn. How baffling is that? But wait- it gets even more baffling.

The theatre did not warn customers of the impending price changes. There were no flyers or banners, no scrolling marquees, no newspaper advertisements, no magazine cutouts, no cheesy commercials, no plastic baggy ads- nothing. They went even as far as not informing the customer (i.e. me) of the price change as they paid, so that when the change you received was less than what you expected, you wouldn’t somehow notice.

But wait- there’s more. After speaking to the manager and calmly explaining that the organization he was working for was ripping hundreds of people off, he absolutely refused to return our money, stating that the only thing he would do would be to issue us tickets to another cinema so that we could redeem them anytime in the future.

Now I won’t go so far as naming the specific Westgate NuMetro cinema that we sadly decided to go to, but I will mention this. The theatre was as empty as a big conch shell on the white sandy shores of Serena Mombasa. I could hear my echo as I loudly berated the fact that I did not have anything to munch as we stonily glared at the screen.

So here’s my advice for NuMetro, if indeed they read my musings on a frequent basis. First- publicise the fact that if a public holiday falls on a Monday, not only will each customer receive a free hotdog, coke and popcorn, but they’ll also receive a free ticket to a future show of their choosing. And for every five friends that they drag along with them, they’ll get a free ticket too.

But if they decide that they’d prefer to exchange their free ticket for a chance to win a flight to the moon, that’s ok! They’ll even receive a free booklet containing KShs 10,000.00 worth of discount coupons redeemable at your sister music store. Lastly, fire the manager at the Westlands NuMetro Cinema. For his name and employee ID, please email me at kangai@kangaimwiti.com.

See- it’s totally easy to get people talking about you. But what are they saying?

Categories: Marketing
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Leave faster

August 10, 2008 · Leave a Comment

Living in New York has spoiled me. 5th Avenue is just a train ride away (the 2/3 downtown to 42nd, then the R uptown to 5th) and if I shopped there, I’d be a pauper! I don’t have $4000 to splurge on half a yard of material, however silky and rare it is. That’s the entire lifetime salary of a secretary living in Meru, Kenya (or a quarter of the monthly allowance of the member of parliament representing that area).

Enter Canal Street- New York’s mecca for fake stuff. Need the new Luis Vuitton tote with the swirls near the handle and the leather clasp? Head to Canal Street. What about the new Gucci Sunny Periwinkle and Fuchsia stilettos that are all the rage? They are there- right on Canal Street.

Unfortunately, I fell for the much-hyped cheap prices and decided to take a trip there this past weekend. After gazing around in wide-eyed consternation, I found a shop selling bags. The Chinese vendor with her son were manning the store while passersby gawked at the obviously counterfeit goods on sale. I walked in and started browsing, assuming that they’d really want my business. After checking out quite a few bags, I had made up my mind on two (without labels, of course). The haggling began. Being a Kenyan, I know that I can haggle my way out of anything, and I was ready for them. Surprisingly, they were not ready for me as they had decided to give me a $5 discount if I bought both bags- hardly a bargain. I imperiously proclaimed that I could not afford it and started making my way out. And then it was at that moment that I heard these three dreaded words…

“Then leave faster.”

When a store owner asks you to not only to leave, but to leave faster then something is way off. In marketing this means that you either made a mistake showing up in the first place, or that store is never seeing you again. In this case, it was both.

As a customer, when you make a choice to shop for fake items at a fraction of the cost of the original, you’re also buying the customer service that comes with it. You’re buying the environment that it resides in, and you’re buying cheapness.

As a store owner, when you make the choice to serve cheap and obviously fake items in an area where everyone else is selling cheap and oviously fake items at similar prices, the only thing you can change or control is how you sell your goods. Otherwise the consequence is that you will leave faster than your competitors.

Categories: Marketing
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Finally…

August 8, 2008 · Leave a Comment

After eight or so months of soul-searching, domain-name registrations, web-hosting issues, web-design challenges and css-coding problems, Zambarau has an e-home that is finally up and running. This is the beginning of something great. Why? Because with beginnings come dreams, goals, missions and visions, hopes and passions, loves, likes, comparisons, challenges, problems, clutter, excitement, joys, lows, highs… pretty much everything that has to do with running a company that you believe in.

I believe in this one, and I can’t wait to see where it takes me, and the people I love.

My company- Zambarau.

My products- marketing consultancy and beauty.

My passion- service.

Categories: Musings