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https://fmtn7rxv.r.eu-west-1.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F%2Fselar.com%2Fp%2Fw916op9966%3Faffiliate=76w6j47779/1/0102019ca39c

Fiona Ajimsimbom, Douala, Douala (2026)

12/06/2026

Before Abongwa launched her office delivery service she sat with her daughter for one hour and asked one question.

"Why will this fail?"
Her daughter looked up from her phone.
"We have not even started."
"Exactly," Abongwa said. "So tell me. Why will it fail?"

Her daughter thought about it seriously.
"The puff puff might be cold by the time it arrives if the office is far."
"What else?"
"If we get more orders than we can make, we will either disappoint a customer or produce bad quality in a hurry."
"What else?"
"Payment. If they pay on delivery and nobody is at the office when we arrive, we lose the product and the money."

Abongwa wrote every answer down.

Before she launched she had solved three problems. Insulated wrapping for delivery. A maximum order limit of three offices per day. Payment in advance only.

The delivery service launched without a single one of those problems occurring.
Not because she was lucky.
Because she had found the failure before the failure could find her.
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Law 25: The power of negative manifestation

📖 The Lesson: Look for the problems and fix them before they happen
Bartlett says, "Engaging in an uncomfortable conversation today paves the way for a more comfortable life in the future. Prevention is easier than cure."

Abongwa did not launch with blind optimism. She launched with clear eyes. Negative manifestation; asking 'why will this fail?' before you begin, is not pessimism. It is the most practical form of preparation that exists. It forces you to find the problems while they are still hypothetical, while they are still cheap to solve, before a real customer encounters them.

The optimist sees only what could go right. The strategist sees what could go right and what could go wrong; and prepares for both. Ask the uncomfortable question first. It will save you from living it later.

💬 Tell me in the comments 👇
Before your next launch, pitch, product or decision — ask yourself, 'why will this fail?' Write your three most honest answers in the comments. You might solve a problem before it costs you.

11/06/2026

The rainy season arrived in Bamenda the way it always did; not gradually, but all at once.

For the first three days Abongwa did not open. The rain was too heavy. The street too empty. The umbrella above her table dripped at the edges and the charcoal struggled to stay lit.

Her daughter found her on the fourth morning sitting in the kitchen, watching the rain.
"You are not going?"
"In this rain? Who is buying puff puff in this rain?"
Her daughter was quiet for a moment.
"The people who need a warm breakfast," she said, "are out in this rain right now."
Abongwa thought about that.

She went out.

She was right that the crowd was smaller. But the people who came, the ones who had not found anywhere else, were grateful in a way that fair-weather customers never were. They stood under the umbrella. They waited. One woman said it was the only warm thing she had eaten out since the rain began.

Abongwa discovered something that rainy season that changed her relationship with difficulty.

Most of her competitors closed when conditions got hard.
Which meant the customers who needed her most had nowhere else to go.

Pressure; she had always thought of as an obstacle.
That rainy season she began to understand it as an advantage.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Law 24: You must make pressure your privilege

📖 The Lesson: Pressure can become an advantage.
Bartlett says, "Comfortable and easy are short-term friends but long-term enemies. If you're looking for growth, choose the challenge."

Abongwa's competitors chose comfort. She chose the rain. This is the counterintuitive gift of pressure: it removes the competition. When conditions become difficult most people retreat to safety. The ones who stay; who show up despite the rain, the slow month, the difficult customer, the rising costs — inherit the customers that everyone else abandoned.

Pressure does not have to be a negative thing. Framed correctly it is the condition that separates the businesses that endure from the ones that only operate when everything is easy. And the customers who find you in the rain are the most loyal ones you will ever have.

💬 Tell me in the comments 👇
Think of a difficult season in your business — rain, slow month, a setback, when you showed up anyway. What did you discover about your customers or yourself because of it?

10/06/2026

Abongwa noticed the smell from the charcoal stove in the third week of March.

Not a burning smell. Something different. A slight chemical quality that had not been there before. She had bought a new bag of charcoal from a different supplier — cheaper, delivered to her door.

She told herself it was just the new charcoal settling. That it would pass.
It did not pass.

Two weeks later a customer, the teacher who bought every morning, asked carefully: "Abongwa, has something changed? The puff puff tastes slightly different this week."

Abongwa felt the discomfort she had been avoiding arrive all at once.

She had known. She had noticed. She had chosen not to look directly at the problem because looking at it would mean admitting the cheaper charcoal was a mistake; and returning to the more expensive supplier would cost her money she did not want to spend.

She switched back to the original supplier that same day.
The puff puff was right again by the following morning.

But the teacher had noticed. And for two weeks after the switch he bought only one bag instead of his usual four.

Abongwa calculated the cost of the cheaper charcoal over those two weeks.
Then she calculated the cost of the teacher's reduced orders.

The cheaper charcoal had cost her more than the expensive one ever would.
Avoidance, she understood now, is never actually free.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Law 23: Don't be an Ostrich

📖 The Lesson: Avoiding your problems won't make them magically go away.
Bartlett says, "Avoiding uncomfortable realities and difficult conversations is unhelpful. We must recognise what isn't right, assess what we can do about it, and get to the truth, however challenging that might be."

Abongwa buried her head in the sand for two weeks. She knew something was wrong. She chose not to look. This is the Ostrich instinct: the belief that if you avoid confronting a problem it will eventually resolve itself or become someone else's issue. It never does. Problems do not shrink when ignored. They grow and compound until the cost of addressing them is much higher than it would have been at the start.

The uncomfortable conversation. The supplier problem. The product quality issue. The declining customer. Face it directly and early. The short-term discomfort of honesty is always cheaper than the long-term cost of avoidance.

💬 Tell me in the comments 👇
What is one uncomfortable reality in your business or work that you have been avoiding looking at directly? What would it cost you to address it today versus waiting another month?

08/06/2026

In the eleventh month someone offered Abongwa a market stall(shop).

A proper one. Indoor. Covered. With a shelf and a small counter. In the main Bamenda market. Rent was 25,000 francs a month.

She looked at it for a long time.

Her sister said take it. "At least if Nchang's Kitchen does not work out you will have the stall."

Her daughter said something different. "If you take the stall as a backup, you will never fully commit to what you are building. You will always have an exit and you will always be half in."

Abongwa spent a week thinking about it.

She thought about the stall not as an opportunity but as a signal. Taking it would mean some part of her still believed Nchang's Kitchen might not work. And if she believed that — if she had one foot out; the business would feel it.

She turned down the stall.

She used the 25,000 francs she had saved toward it to instead improve the table. A proper wooden structure with a small canopy for rainy days, a printed banner and a second stove for higher volume mornings.

The investment in Plan A doubled her capacity.

Three months later the market stall was taken by someone else.

Abongwa never thought about it again.
You cannot fully build what you are not fully committed to.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Law 22: You must become a Plan-A thinker

📖 The Lesson: Having too many plans is a distraction
Bartlett says, "There is no greater force of creativity, determination and commitment than a person undistracted by a Plan B."

Abongwa's sister offered her safety. Her daughter offered her clarity.

A Plan B is not wrong in itself. But when it becomes a permanent exit option, always available, always whispering; it quietly undermines your commitment to Plan A. You stop making the bold decisions that only fully committed people make. You hedge. You hold back. You stay comfortable.

The most creative, determined and relentless builders are the ones who have removed the exit. Not because they are reckless; but because they have decided that what they are building is worth everything they have. Commit to Plan A. Invest in Plan A. Improve Plan A. There is no greater creative force than a person who has no other option but to make their plan work.

💬 Tell me in the comments 👇
Is there a Plan B in your life right now that might be quietly undermining your commitment to what you actually want to build? What would it look like to invest that energy into Plan A instead?

07/06/2026

The batch thst burned

In ten months of running Nchang's Kitchen, Abongwa had burned a batch of puff puff exactly seven times.

She kept count in the back of her notebook. Not out of self-punishment; but because each one taught her something.

Batch one burned because the charcoal was too hot and she had not adjusted. She learned to test the temperature with a small piece of batter before committing the full batch.

Batch three burned because she had been distracted by a difficult customer conversation. She learned never to have a difficult conversation while something was on the stove.

Batch five burned because she had used a different oil without accounting for its different smoke point. She learned to test any new ingredient in a small quantity first.

Batch seven; the most recent, burned because she had been trying a new shape and had not adjusted the frying time accordingly. She learned the new shape needed forty-five seconds less.

Her daughter once asked why she kept the list.
"Because," Abongwa said, "the woman who sells puff puff two streets away has probably burned batches too. But I do not think she writes them down."

"And that makes a difference?" her daughter asked.
"It means she will burn the same batch again," Abongwa said. "I will find a new way to fail."

She said it without any pride. Just as a fact.

Progress, she had come to understand, was not the absence of failure. It was the refusal to repeat the same one.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Law 21: You must out-fail the competition

📖 The Lesson; When you fail more, you learn more.
Bartlett says,"Failure = Feedback. Feedback = Knowledge. Knowledge = Power. Failure gives you power."

Abongwa had failed seven times. She had learned seven things her competitor had not.

This is the counterintuitive truth about failure that most people spend their careers avoiding: the business owner who fails the most and records it, reflects on it and adjusts from it, accumulates a competitive advantage that no amount of caution can replicate.

Fear of failure is fear of learning. And a business that stops learning starts dying. Fail faster. Record it. Understand it. Move forward differently. That is the whole curriculum.

💬 Tell me in the comments 👇
What is a failure in your business that you have been embarrassed about, that actually taught you something you could not have learned any other way? Tell me. That lesson is more valuable than any success story.

06/06/2026

It started with one Monday.

Abongwa was tired. Genuinely tired in the way that accumulates slowly and then arrives all at once. So she did not open on Monday. Just one Monday. She would be back Tuesday.

Tuesday she opened. Most of her regulars came.

The following Monday she felt the same tiredness again. She told herself she had opened all week. One Monday was reasonable.

She did not open.

By the fourth consecutive missed Monday three things had happened quietly. The okada man had found another puff puff seller who opened at 5:30am. Two office workers had adjusted their morning routes. And Abongwa's Monday revenue, which she had been mentally dismissing as small, had disappeared entirely from her week.

She did the arithmetic one evening. One missed Monday every week for a month was four Mondays. At her average Monday revenue that was 12,000 francs. In a year it was 144,000 francs.

She sat with that number for a long time.
She had not made a big decision to lose 144,000 francs.
She had made one small decision four times.
She opened on Monday the following week. And every Monday after.

But the okada man took three weeks to come back. And one of the office workers never did.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Law 20: A small miss now creates a big miss later

📖 The Lesson: Nothing is small in business when repeated.
Bartlett says, "The smallest seeds of today's negligence will bloom into tomorrow's biggest regrets."

Abongwa did not lose 144,000 francs in one decision. She lost it in four small ones.

This is how most business erosion happens. Not in dramatic failures or obvious mistakes. In small absences. The unanswered message. The follow-up that was never sent. The standard that was lowered just this once. The Monday that was skipped because it felt small.

Nothing in business is truly small when it is repeated. A small miss now is a seed. What grows from it depends entirely on whether you notice it before it blooms.

💬 Tell me in the comments 👇
What is one small thing you have been missing consistently in your business; something you have told yourself does not matter much, that might be compounding into a bigger problem than you realise?

05/06/2026

Abongwa's niece, Vera, had started helping at the table on busy mornings.

She was fast. Enthusiastic. She handed out portions quickly and made change without hesitation. By every obvious measure she was doing well.

But Abongwa noticed something.

Vera folded the white paper loosely. Not carelessly. Just without the deliberate neatness Abongwa had developed over months. The corners were not sharp. The edges were not even. The portions looked different from the ones Abongwa wrapped herself.

She said nothing for two days. On the third day she stood beside Vera and showed her.
"Watch the corner," Abongwa said. "Fold it like this. Then this. Then tuck."

Vera looked at her. "It is just wrapping paper, Auntie."

"It is not just wrapping paper," Abongwa said quietly. "It is the first thing they see. It is the last thing they remember. It is Nchang's Kitchen before they even taste the puff puff."

Vera learned the fold.

Two weeks later a customer; a woman who bought every Friday, told Abongwa something that stayed with her.
"I always know when you wrapped it yourself," the woman said. "It feels more careful. I do not know how to explain it. It just feels like someone cared."

Abongwa thought about Vera's question. Just wrapping paper.
Nothing in a good business is just anything.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Law 19: You must sweat the small stuff

📖 The Lesson: Take time to do the little things well.
Bartlett says, "If you don't care about tiny details, you'll produce bad work because good work is the culmination of hundreds of tiny details."

The customer could not explain why the carefully folded parcel felt different. She just knew that it did. That feeling, unexplainable but real; is the product of hundreds of tiny decisions made consistently over time.

The fold. The arrangement. The way you hand something over. The words you choose when you greet someone. None of these things seem important individually. Together they are your standard. And your standard is your brand.

The world's most successful businesses are not built on one great idea. They are built on a thousand small decisions made with care.

💬 Tell me in the comments 👇
What is one small detail in your business that you have been dismissing as unimportant; but that your customers probably notice even if they cannot articulate why?

04/06/2026

Pillar 2 of the Nchang's Kitchen Diaries is done.

The next post is the first story in Pillar 3.

Which part of Pillar 2 stood out for you the most?

03/06/2026

The First Five Seconds

Abongwa's daughter had been studying the morning foot traffic for two weeks.

She timed it with her phone. How long did someone take to decide whether to stop at Nchang's Kitchen or walk past? She watched thirty people make that decision.

Average time: four to five seconds.
That was it. Four to five seconds of eye contact with the table or not, determined everything.

She brought the finding to Abongwa on a Wednesday evening.
"Five seconds," she said. "That is all you have."

They looked at the table together. The cloth-covered bowl. The stove. The sign. What did someone see in five seconds?

The following morning Abongwa made three changes.
She placed the most golden, most perfect puff puff at the very front of the table; visible from ten metres away. She lit the stove earlier so the smell of frying reached the street before the table was even visible. And she stood in front of the table instead of behind it; so the first thing people encountered was a person, not a product.

The first day of the changes she counted eight new customers.
Eight people who had passed without stopping for months.
She had not changed the price. Not the recipe. Not the location.
She had changed what happened in the first five seconds.

And the first five seconds, she now understood, were the only seconds that truly mattered.
-------------------------------------------------
Law 18: Fight for the first five seconds

📖 The Lesson: your success in business depends on just five seconds.
Bartlett says, "Attention might just be the most generous gift that anyone can give."

Abongwa discovered what the world's best marketers already know: you do not lose customers because your product is bad. You lose them because they never stayed long enough to find out it was good.

Five seconds is the window. In those five seconds your customer decides — consciously or not, whether what you are offering is worth their attention.

The smell that reached them before they saw the table. The golden puff puff positioned at the front. The person standing in front instead of behind. All of these are five-second decisions. And five-second decisions, made deliberately and consistently, are the difference between a business that grows and one that waits.

Fight for the first five seconds. Everything else follows from there.

💬 Tell me in the comments 👇
Think about your own business — what does a potential customer see, hear or feel in the first five seconds of encountering what you offer? Is it fighting for their attention or waiting for it?

02/06/2026

The Free One

There was a woman who passed Nchang's Kitchen every morning without stopping.
Not in a rude way. Just in the way of someone who had a routine and Nchang's Kitchen was not part of it.

Abongwa noticed her the way you notice a pattern. Same time. Same pace. Same direction. Never a glance at the table.

One Tuesday morning on an instinct she could not fully explain, Abongwa held out a single puff puff as the woman passed.

"Try it," she said. "No charge."

The woman stopped. Looked suspicious; the way anyone looks when something is free without explanation. Then she took it.

She ate it walking. Slowed down. Stopped completely.
Turned around. "How much?"

"100 francs for four," Abongwa said.
The woman bought two bags.

She has stopped every morning since. Sometimes she buys three bags. Sometimes she brings a colleague. Once she brought her mother who was visiting from the village.

Abongwa gave away one puff puff that Tuesday morning. It cost her approximately 25 francs.
The return on that 25 francs, calculated across every morning since, is something she has stopped trying to count.
------------------------------------------------
Law 17: Let them try and they will buy

📖 The Lesson: Let your customers try your product first; and they will buy.
Bartlett says, "Through the lens of ownership, the ordinary becomes the extraordinary."

Abongwa did not sell the woman on the puff puff. She let the puff puff sell itself.

The moment someone experiences your product, really experiences it, without the barrier of having to decide whether it is worth the money — their relationship with it changes. They move from evaluating it to owning the experience of it. And ownership, even of a single bite, creates attachment.

The sample, the free trial, the taste, the demo; these are not generosity. They are the most efficient sales tools that exist. Because no description of your product is more convincing than the product itself.

💬 Tell me in the comments 👇
What would it look like to let one potential customer truly experience what you offer this week — before they pay for it? What is the smallest version of your product you could give away that would make someone want to buy the full thing?

Fiona Ajimsimbom

12/06/2026

11/06/2026

10/06/2026

08/06/2026

07/06/2026

06/06/2026

05/06/2026

04/06/2026

03/06/2026

02/06/2026

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