Anyone who has heard John Sanei speak knows he is very persuasive about the need for businesses to plan for the future.
Sanei is a trend specialist, business strategist, keynote speaker and entrepreneur. He has over 20 years spent his time helping businesses with their strategic thinking, how to remain relevant in an increasingly fast-changing world, as well as how they can position themselves for future innovative growth.
With the launch of his new book What’s Your Moonshot? Future-proof Yourself and Your Business In The Age Of Exponential Disruption everyone can now take his teachings home.
While the book covers the same topics that have made him South Africa’s go-to trend expert, largely the future of leadership, the workplace and consumers, he also shares a little of his back story, revealing why he is now a man obsessed with helping companies keep up.
As he explains, by the age of twenty-eight, he had made millions after investing in the then hot Primi Piatti restaurant franchise. “My success was measured by my financial wealth and I was running on fuel-injected ambition; working hard and riding high. By the age of thirty, I had lost it all.”
The reason? He saw the warning signs a little too late.
“I didn’t adapt to a shape-shifting business environment. And I didn’t adapt because I was not mentally prepared to even comprehend that it was in fact changing. In the rapid-paced, exponentially evolving digital age, this inability to see the wood for the trees is becoming more and more common in business.”
Anyone who has created a new way of interacting, connecting, buying, developing products and tech or delivering services has achieved a Moonshot and has changed the world around us in their own way
Reaching For The Moon
The book takes its name from the term ‘Moonshot’ which originated from US President John F Kennedy’s quest to put a man on the moon in the 1960s, and has now come to mean a bold and potentially dangerous mission which should in all likelihood fail, but because of a powerful purpose driving it, succeeds.
Sanei writes that we are all capable of achieving our very own ‘Moonshot’ idea – that is “making people believe that the seemingly impossible is possible.”
Examples given in the book of individuals who have successfully achieved their Moonshot idea include Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Apple’s Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, as well as South African businessman and founder of Pick n Pay Raymond Ackerman.
“Anyone who has created a new way of interacting, connecting, buying, developing products and tech or delivering services has achieved a Moonshot and has changed the world around us in their own way.”
How will we remain profitable (and sane) in a brave new world that’s so different to the world we thought we knew?
Victor Versus Victim
But if we are to reach our ‘Moonshot’ there is work to do and Sanei provides the tools.
Sanei first gives internal strategies to achieve what he calls a victor’s mindset, such as engaging in positive internal dialogue, adopting healthy habits and traits, and in particular unlearning our propensity to perceive ourselves as victims.
It’s only once we have our minds right, can we move to external strategies that can be applied to our businesses.
Sanei’s particular strategy is one that he calls the ‘Forever Profitable Methodology’ which teaches businesses to answer the ultimate question: “How will we remain profitable (and sane) in a brave new world that’s so different to the world we thought we knew?”
The first step, we learn, is by bravely embracing change and keeping abreast of changing markets and consumer needs that are a result of advancements such as greater access to information and knowledge, more connectivity, and more digitisation.
“This growth isn’t going to magically become a fact on the 1st of January 2023 – it is happening right now at an exponential rate and it is laying down the gauntlet for us to change.”
This is what the founders of companies like Uber, Airbnb and SpaceX have already figured out, he writes, and what he hopes you do too – and soon.
What’s Your Moonshot? Future-proof Yourself and Your Business In The Age Of Exponential Disruption retails for R240, and is available at all good book stores and online. See JohnSanei.com for more.
