Grit, grind and the five zones every founder has to pass through

Many people start a business and then stop. Dr Kolawole Ojo, chief executive of Competent Limited, has spent twenty-four years in business watching it happen, and his explanation is plain: nobody told them what building would cost. In a GEPA leadership workshop he set out that cost from his own history.

Meet a need, then count the cost

An entrepreneur, Ojo says, identifies a need or an opportunity, takes the risk of creating a solution, and organises time, people and skills to deliver it. A problem you can see is not automatically a need. Build for a problem people do not feel, and you carry the extra cost of persuading the market it wants what you made.

Grit, in his account, does not mean you never get tired. It means you do not give up, and you keep building after the applause stops. In 2014 his company put hundreds of millions of naira, some of it borrowed from a bank, into a signed government contract. The government did not pay, the matter is still in court, and the staff went from forty-six to eight as resignation letters arrived one after another.

He names four qualities that must all be present: a growth mindset, resilience, transformation and intentionality. The grind is the daily discipline of showing up, solving problems and building piece by piece. Citing Luke 14:28, he urges founders to sit down and count the cost first, so they do not start what they cannot finish.

The five grit zones

Ojo describes five zones a venture passes through, each asking something different:

• The blurry vision. Nobody sees the end from the beginning. Grit means showing up daily to refine your why: what am I building, and why does it matter?
• The capital crunch. Lack of money is not lack of mission. Grit means being resourceful rather than simply resourced.
• The lonely leadership lane. Building alone is normal at first, and people watch your consistency before they follow.
• The feedback furnace. You will be misunderstood and criticised. Listen, learn and adjust without losing your identity.
• The market or trend shift. Many businesses do not end where they started. Adapt without abandoning your core.

Spend what you hold

His training business shows the second zone at work. With a programme planned across five states, he took his plan to a microfinance bank for a loan. The banker heard it and told him that, on that plan, he did not need the bank. The business had no premises, no equipment and fifty thousand naira. Ojo paid it as a deposit to an on-air presenter to publicise the training. The plan needed fourteen registrations to break even, and seventeen people signed up.

Many capital crunches, he argues, come not from having no money but from spending money that has not arrived. His rule is to spend what you have and expand with what you expect. If you hold twenty million naira and fifty million is due at the end of the week, plan the week on the twenty million, and keep the fifty for a plan B such as higher salaries or more marketing.

Rest, review, and decide

Ojo is firm that the grind must not become burnout, because a leader who burns out stops being relevant. He recommends at least one break a quarter, taken as the owner, to pray, think the business through from start to finish and do some research.

The same quarterly rhythm answers the first question put to him afterwards: when to pivot and when to hold on. He sits with the managers delivering the work, asks why the returns are not coming, then weighs the result against his why. His school software lost money across thirty-two schools, yet those schools shaped a product with more than twenty-five result templates, and that record persuaded buyers elsewhere. Results, he says, are not only sales.

The full course, taught from the workshop recording, is in the catalogue. It also covers a supermarket in Jos that sold nothing for three months, choosing people who celebrate progress, and how to put structure into a new startup.