- He's a Nigerian billionaire and founder of the
Dangote Group.
His company operates in Nigeria and other African countries.
He has an estimated net worth of 18.6 billion dollars.
He's Aliko Dandote,
and here are his top 10 rules for success.
- Well to be a good leader.
You have to be a very good listener.
You have to listen to people,
you have to also to quite relative advice.
You have to make sure that it is not
what you tell people to do.
You have to crack your brains
and have quite a lot of what you call
advice from your own team.
It has to be a teamwork,
because there's no way you can make it
as a person without a good team.
- You must be consistent.
When you try a business and you start,
you might have hiccups here and there.
It does not mean that that business is not going to work,
there must be challenges.
In fact what I keep saying is that
life without challenges is very, very boring.
So if you have challenges you just have to know
how to work out and work around these challenges,
and you'll be successful once you are consistent.
What business doesn't like is for you to try something
and then once you have one or two problems
now you want to change or move into another business.
That doesn't work in business at all.
The way that the data is,
you need to have a lot of information identified to you
so it will allow you to make decisions.
To also take the right decisions.
What I was doing five years ago,
if I tried to do them without
the information that we have today,
it's just not going to happen at all.
Well the problem with some of our young graduation today,
they just want to jump and see
themselves up there overnight.
It doesn't really happen.
What you need to do is to be very, very focused,
as a person,
and be dedicated to whatever that you are doing.
It is not really good for you to now
go out and try something,
then after a month you just say 'No, it doesn't work'.
You jump into something else.
I think you need to be very, very focused
in what you are doing.
Once you believe in what you are doing,
you should not take your either business or job
as something that you must do.
Okay, you must take it as part of your hobby.
If it's part of your hobby, then you do it better.
You want to try to think ahead.
In business sometimes what's good today
might not be good tomorrow.
So you need to look at,
if you have the means,
there's nothing really like diversification.
Sometimes you do quite a lot of diversification,
and then you consolidate before you move forward.
You can not just keep expanding and expanding,
because sometimes when you over expand,
it comes possible to prices overages.
So you need at least once in a while to consolidate.
When you look at, you know, it is really common
for somebody to leave banking
and go and start something totally new.
Especially in an area of events management.
At the time that she left the bank,
which was 10 years ago.
Nobody thought that something like events management
would actually succeed,
but I mean it is good,
this is really what you call entrepreneurship,
and also a vision.
She had a vision and she is able to actualize our vision.
Just like myself, I remember one time I went to
address a retrieval at First Bank of Nigeria.
When I was selling in First Bank of Nigeria.
This is where Dangote is going to be
in the next five years.
I was not really that big at the time that I went
there to address them.
I'm sure they couldn't really believe
what I was saying then,
but I remember at a point the MG said
they are really shocked at how we actually
been able to make it and also actualize our vision.
So I think with this thing that she has done,
I personally believe that this is
just the beginning of the journey.
Because she has the vision and I'm sure
if she continues to do it,
this can turn into another big business.
Like I always say,
look for one entrepreneur,
there are no boundaries.
Not only are there no boundaries,
you can actually excel much more than your own expectation.
That's really what I expect of an entrepreneur to be.
Not to just just say
okay fine I have a vision and only achieve that vision.
You need to have a vision and a mission
so then you can actually actualize it
and also excel.
I had somebody who came to interview me one time,
and I told him that yes, three, four, five years ago,
I never ever expected myself to be on the Forbes list,
but right now the vision that I have,
and also my own mission,
is actually to be on top of the light.
Not even where I am today.
That's really how a visionary person should be.
Hard work.
I mean that we are very focused,
we are a very focused company.
We don't really go into things that we don't understand.
Any business that I don't understand as well,
I don't do it at all.
That's really why we're successful.
To be an entrepreneur and also to be a visionary person,
you have to actually be very, very bold.
You have to be ready to take calculated risks.
Not just any risks, you have to take a calculated risk.
You have to think big, if you think small,
you'll always have been small in life.
The way that we operate as a company,
especially in Dangote,
just like earlier I said we have a vision.
That vision will have a strategy
of how we're going to achieve the vision.
Which we do normally do over a period of five years.
Like today, we know where we are going.
Even this investment that I announced of
400 million dollars here.
I didn't just sit down on my own and just say it.
It is part of our strategy plan to invest in Kenya.
To be serious, if you want to be the next Dangote,
is that,
you have to have a very big heart.
You have to take quite a lot of risks, calculated risks.
First of all you have to make sure that you're honest.
You must make sure that you don't destroy the name.
Because your name is very important.
That the most valuable asset that you have going forward.
If you don't have a good name, even the banks.
It doesn't matter how big you are,
they're not going to touch.
- [Female] True.
- So you must make sure that you have
a very, very good name.
Number three, you have to make sure that
you say that look, nothing is impossible.
Once you say that yes nothing is impossible,
it means that you can actually achieve that target.
- Thank you so much for watching.
I made this video because Narie Abba asked me to.
So if there's a famous entrepreneur that you
want me to profile next,
leave it in the comments below and I'll see what I can do.
I'd also love to know which of Aliko Dangote's
top 10 rules had the biggest impact on you.
Leave it in the comments, I'm going to join the discussion.
Thank you so much for watching,
choose to believe,
and I'll see you soon.