Most times, the global stories of greatest entrepreneurs start local and you will hear many say that the vision was not intended for global stage but just to solve some local problems and providence took the show from them.
Bill Gates never had the world in mind while building Microsoft, Mark Zuckerberg didn’t have the entire humanity in mind when Facebook started in the dorm room so also Albert Einstein didn’t dream of the generations after while propounding relativity theory but one thing these people had in common was pure intention to serve the people in their local environment which then transformed the remote vision into a global version of their dream.
Most of the greatest people that ever lived told us in their stories that they had pure intentions for building their products and services which is why Alfred Nobel who invented dynamite bequeathed the profits from sales of dynamite to chart peace cause after observing that his pure intent had become a lethal object destruction to humanity.
One of the greatest undoing of many entrepreneurs is the quest to start global while still thinking local then putting the cart before the horse. Among these greatest men is the fascinating story of Jeff Bezos who built Amazon with the objective of making books and educational materials available to people in his environment using the platform of the internet and as he was serving his communities, the pages of his innovation began to unveil through exceptional service rendition and today we have a company with over $1Trillion in market capitalization and the man behind the vision is not left out, he has developed over time to become the wealthiest person in our planet. This is a business Jeff started from his garage with initial capital from his parents. Jeff Bezos started locally but had global business in view using the power of innovation premised by the internet and he has now become the father of ecommerce globally.
The richest black man in the world as at today-Aliko Dangote didn’t have the global stage in view when he started his business and scale the same with advance from his uncle but he allowed innovation to flow through his mind and today, the little business he started, selling commodities has become a manufacturing conglomerate of global repute with prominent presence in major economies in Africa and foray insight into Europe, Asia and the Americas.
We learned how Barack Obama went knocking doors to sell his candidacy to people of Illinois for a House of Representative seat in year 2000 which he lost out to Bobby Rush at the democratic primary but that gave him an innovative platform to go higher and he was latter elected to US Senate in 2004 and as President in 2008. If Obama had not gone door to door in his local in Illinois, he would not have been able to develop the national and international skills that gave him the victory that the world celebrated as the first black man in the white house. An incredible achievement!
This is the message. Start small, develop innovative platform to scale your business or career and follow the growth trend until you become a success of global repute. Please note that being over ambitious can make you over trade and that is death to your vision. Take steps towards your growth, develop organically and not artificially and let integrity be your guide in the business then offer the best of service and when your time is ripe, your product fame will move from local to national and then to global. The universe has a way of drafting support for those that follow this trend and that is how the political pundits and the so called political establishment were dragged to support Barack Obama after delivering key note address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 and 4 years after, he became the 44th President of the United State of America. His timing was right then his debut emerged but he made himself available and was trained for the job already which orchestrated his transition or transformation from rooky in 2000 to a rock star in 2008.
Start local, think global…