The success of a product protects the reputation of the manufacturer. Aston Martin cars are known for their amalgamation of luxury and speed. Today the Aston Martin brand is highly regarded, so to purchase the car is automatically to own a reputable machine. The specific car you purchase is ascribed great value from the moment you take possession of it, because the manufacturer or brand comes with great reputation. Aston Martin/Mercedes Benz want your car to flourish because they get the credit.
Every product carries within it, the DNA of its manufacturer or brand. Its worth, its value, its desirability etc. all come from that. When we buy a costly brand, we often say we know what we are paying for. When the product does not live up to expectations we are disappointed with the product and if they do not restore our confidence, we typically become disillusioned with the brand.
Let me tell you a story of Kanayo, Etim, Monty and Shin
Years ago, it could have been said that these four where destined to meet and become a team. They grew up in different countries Canada, Togo, Australia, and Thailand. They each had middle class educated parents and lived in their country’s respective civil service ecosystem. They educated themselves both intellectually, mentally, and customarily. They worked hard, traveled extensively and all landed in Bilbao, Spain.
They met approximately three years into living there on a beach run that was anything but spectacular.
For Shin, she noticed right away that you would need 12% more money to live an equivalent lifestyle in Bilbao as you would live in Bangkok. Now housing in Bangkok’s city centre was relatively more expensive than the equivalent in Bilbao. The kicker is that in Bilbao, the average salary is 155% of what is earned in Bangkok. This was nice yet, her heart was squarely in Bangkok
For Monty, he loved Brisbane, but Bilbao had something special – its population of about 330K was about 13% of Brisbane yet it was culturally and ecologically rich like Brisbane. While there was a significant income difference in favour of Brisbane, he did not lose any income relocating, if anything it made him richer.
For Etim, Lomé in all its glory, colour, culture and foods was his delight, yet he was here now. He missed the weird combination of mostly dry days, constant heat with the contrast of many foggy days. Bilbao on the other hand was quite the opposite, sort of, the climate characterised by low sunshine and many rain days.
For Kanayo, Canada deserves to be voted the best place to live in the world and to top that she lived in Quebec, the absolute best place in Canada. For her it was a glorious, beautiful culturally sound place, from its undulating mountains to its various festivals, to her it was a tourist’s paradise. Bilboa absolutely had its perks for one she loved the natural beaches that are within reach when the weather permits.
It was a day that had started off much like any Bilbao dry day, it was nice and as would happen occasionally, the sun was out making everywhere bright and beautiful. The beach was packed with the “suners”, the stunners, the “basics”, the surfers, the partiers, the adventurers, the lovers and the runners. Today the runners seem to outnumber them all. There were people in a plethora of colours and combination gear, most in sun glasses they were men and women, young and old of varying size and hues. It was a particularly spectacular sight. Many seemed to be part of groups with matching outfit or some unifying item. There were hundreds of people probably a couple of thousands all together. The official run started at 10am but many had started well in advance choosing to make their official starting point wherever they found themselves at the time of the alarm.
As the alarm went off and the giant mobile clock rang out simultaneously, the race began and as if by practice everyone not running simultaneously starts a uniform pattern of applause. It was rhythmic and beautiful and almost too picturesque to imagine. They run length of approximately 13 miles of beach front would take the average runner about 2.5 hours and for those that ran at a near walking pace about four hours. At the end of the run was the biggest party and festival all at once. It is said that at the great run lives are changed forever, lasting relations are formed and new pathways are forged. The runners would jump into an area of the beach cordoned off just for them, trucks of mobile partiers and entertainers come for them. The party goes on till the wee hours of the day and the next day the entire town and its environs goes quiet as people sleep away their exhaustion.
Something extraordinary happened this time, just before the party broke up around 5am, the rains came torrentially at first, then suddenly with a blizzard like shower that had bever been seen before. It was literally impossible to see who was in front of you. People took shelter huddling against each other. Many formed human chains walking, wading and staggering off the beach to get on to the path home or to whatever temporary place they were staying at. Those that planned to drive off, tried to ride it off on the beach. It was a world of chaos, panic and then stillness as people called out to loved ones and through the rhythm of voices located one another. Others joined strangers till they found safety. The rains fell for what must have felt like hours but was really the longest half hour, then just as abruptly it reached a crescendo and rhythm that was more bearable, where light could penetrate, and people could move around less clumsily.
Kanayo, Etim, Monty and Shin found themselves with each other flung far away from where they each thought they ought to be. This chance encounter is where their intertwined lives started. From there they created a shared outcome and became manufacturers of the most important gadget currently known to man. Together they built an industry of substance, bringing out products that are anticipated and, in many cases, revered. These products bear the unique attributes of the four founders fused proactively into an organisation buoyed by Best Practices, Best Performance, Best Participation (P-3 Code). By these they place their stamp of approval on everything they make, knowing that each one bears their DNA.
I told the story because of the oddity of how they met and who they were. I told this story because what they did came out of the decisions they made. Nothing about them or their life story was extraordinary and yet they command more than 45% of the global revenue of the product they make. They put their name on it, therefore they are it. This is where the real story that defines the rest of their lives start. They are manufacturers, makers, brand preservers, influencers and by extension they are connected to many of us, tightly wound around the choices we make, sometimes daily. I will not tell you who they are, just that you have most likely used their products and you might even use them every day.
Here are the things I learned from this quad:
- Chance happens to everyone, just be aware and embrace people and interruptions, sometimes literally.
- People are the engine for every good thing. Every great experience, thing developed, opportunity, imagination starts, is enabled and ends with people.
- When a manufacturer puts their name on a product they are giving it their stamp of approval, they are asking the consumer to measure it by them.
- No matter who you are, you can create credibility by what you do and how you defend anything that has your name on it of the manufacturer that is why companies put their names on their product. A name matters as it denotes expectation, potential and function of whatever it is bestowed on.
- Success of a thing defends and protects the reputation of the manufacturer or the brand behind the thing.
- A name is not just a label, it is character. It has real consequence.
- Most things are designed to function by laws, not who we are, where we came from or our pet peeves. When we see a big tree after several years, we remember when it was first planted as a young seedling that green into a sapling and eventually into this remarkable huge tree. If we could see the root system, we would see how big it has grown, how extensive and how deep. It has grown big enough to support the spectacular size of tree we see above ground. There is a law behind it all, basically with the right soil, nutrients, water, sunlight – the tree roots, stems, leaves receive what they need to thrive. The same tree in the wrong environment might have died or not grown quite as strong.
- To make item 7 balanced, and keep item 1 honest, I must acknowledge that opportunity matters a great deal. Those afforded good opportunities can convert chance and leverage laws to great advantages. The reverse is also true, hard times and lack can also bring about such severe hardships that nothing works.
- Laws make things predictable, good laws are necessary for good things bad laws destroy everything.
- Success and failures are the outcomes of laws.
- Read the owner’s manual it gives you all the details and shows you the benefits. Read the next paragraph.
When you bought your Tesla, it came with an owner’s manual from which you can learn a lot about the machine even before you exercise it. While you can learn the car by driving it, you are better equipped of you read about it and then drive it. This is because that manual was written by the manufacturer.
The grounds for their warranty and guarantees are predicated upon the prescribed use. Your car is an archetype of a machine model they have made, tested and analysed many times over, because of that they can make promises by extension of everything they make using their predefined methodologies and validations!
So if anything goes awry of their expectation when used in accordance to their prescribed use cases, they place a manufacturers promise to make the most effective correction at their own expense. That is confidence!
They do this regardless of who might own their product and by extension a piece of them. It is done purely for their name’s sake.
- The more you know of something, the better you can exercise it, leverage it, become an expert on it.
- To leverage the components of a thing, you must strive to know it
The point of this whole thing is that everything matters, the good matters as much as the bad, but the most notable thing is the good always goes farther, packs more power and yields greater outcomes. No matter how mundane your experience or encounters find the good if here is any and Go Good!
About Ngozi Bell
Inspiration, Hard Work, Innovation. These three foundational elements anchor Ngozi’s core belief that manifesting the extraordinary is always within reach. Inspired by her mother A.C.Obikwere, a scientist and author, she learned the privilege of living at the edge of important encounters and dedicating herself to robust and perpetual learning. Ngozi’s background is a combination of Physics, Engineering, Venture Capital/Private Equity, regulations, and business where she has managed over $1B in cumulative revenue. Ngozi is a speaker, storyteller, and writer on a diverse set of topics including AI, iDLT, ML, Signal Processing, iOT, women, entrepreneurship and more. She contributes regularly to VOA, has been a TEDx speaker and is published on tech and non-tech platforms. She is a champion of STEM, women, youth, art and the Africa we must engage. Ngozi is an adjunct professor of Physics and management with work
experience in Asia, Europe, Africa, Middle East, and North America. She is a founder of a number of a number of enterprises and host of the podcast Stem, Stocks and Stews (https://anchor.fm/stemstocksstews-podcast).