The smartest businessperson I ever met sold tomatoes.

Jalloh Benny
@bennyjalloh6559
3 days ago

The smartest businessperson I ever met sold tomatoes.

She did not have a degree. She did not have a website or a business plan or a pitch deck. She had a wooden table, a scale that was probably older than me, and a mind for numbers that would embarrass most MBAs.

I was twelve and my mother sent me to the market with exact change and a list. Tomatoes, peppers, onions, palm oil. Simple. I went to Mama Nkechi's stall because my mother said she is the only one whose tomatoes last past Wednesday.

Mama Nkechi took one look at my money and said this is not enough. I said that is what my mother gave me. She said your mother gave you Monday prices and today is Saturday. Then she paused and said but because your mother is a good customer, I will give you Wednesday prices.

She had dynamic pricing before Silicon Valley had a name for it.

She also had customer retention strategy. She would throw in a few extra peppers and say tell your mother those are from me. My mother would come back the next week because of those free peppers. Mama Nkechi knew exactly what she was doing.

She bought her tomatoes at 4 AM from the farm trucks. She knew which farmers had the best soil. She knew which tomatoes would last and which ones were already turning behind the pretty red skin. She could sort a crate in ten minutes and tell you the profit margin on each pile without writing anything down.

Years later I sat in a university lecture about supply chain management and I thought about Mama Nkechi at 4 AM, inspecting tomatoes by lamplight, building a business with her bare hands in a market with no receipts, no contracts, and no safety net.

Here is what Mama Nkechi taught me without ever giving a lecture: business intelligence is not about where you learned it. It is about whether you can read people, read a market, and read the quality of what you are selling before your customer can.

Every startup founder I have met could learn something from a market woman who never lost money on a Saturday.

Respect the hustle that does not come with a LinkedIn profile.

#Notes #NircleStories #Business #MarketWoman #AfricanWisdom #Entrepreneurship #StreetSmart #RealTalk #NigerianStories #HustleStory

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@fionaparker4788