Wale Jana: Hire People Smatter Than You! 

African Billionaire Perfumer Wale Jana of Sapphire Group Africa in sharing tips for business success and mistakes to avoid has said…

“I was reading a Donald Trump book a while back and he made this statement “hire people smarter than you” it took me some years to understand it but now I get it!

If you are the smartest person in your organization, you are in trouble, you need to surround yourself with quality people, they won’t come cheap but never forget that if you pay peanuts you will hire monkeys.
The success of your organization depends on the quality of people working for you.

At Sapphire Group it’s been quite challenging since last year 2019 especially with investors and I quickly realized I couldn’t cope any more so I did one of the smartest things I ever did; I got an Investment Manager. People get agitated when money is involved and I don’t have the skill set to deal with that but the investment manager knows how to talk to people, he knows how to assure people, he is everything I am not in terms of relating to investors.

Another smart thing I did was to get a Chief Financial Officer, I am good with turning one Naira to 100 Naira but managing it is another capacity I don’t have, I found a genius who understands money and how financial issues should be handled.

Do yourself a favor, get very smart people around you, it will keep you from learning the hard way. You may not be able to afford them as full staff but you can have them as consultants. I have learnt that the major secret of successful people is working with those who know what they don’t know.”