Where is your horizon? How far away from home does your daily life take you? How far into the past and future do you think about?
I live on an island, and know quite a few people whose daily lives never even reach the beach. On the other end of the spectrum (to mix metaphors), few days go by when I’m not talking on Zoom to someone from Africa, if not also calls in the morning from Europe and late at night from Asia.
Mentoring entrepreneurs, especially those in Africa, most founders are focused on their home city or home county, occasionally dreaming about their whole country and only when pressed dreaming bigger about regional scale or cross-continental scale. That is probably all for the best, given how challenging it is to build a $1+ million company covering any one city, but founders need to make time every few months to think bigger, to work backwards, and and to think strategically.
The same is true of investors, who far more often than not just invest in their home city or region. Wake up investors. Diversify! Expand your horizons!!
Inspiring this post was one of my African conversations of the day. One of my fledglings there is exporting globally, likely soon to be expanding to a second country, and with that, the lesson of the day is how to set up a multi-national corporate structure. Truly fun times.
