A Decade Worth Celebrating
The journey started on 6th January 2012 when Nassuuna & Company Advocates was registered in Uganda. It is a matter of great pride to see how far we have come; our company growing, embracing good value systems and achieving what I dreamt and hoped to achieve at this time.
At that time, all I had was my faith in God and the confidence that I had to make it work because I had no choice. So, like many other entrepreneurs, I had fears and doubts, but these were not stronger than my yearning to succeed. Like one wise man wrote “if you don’t actually plant something, you have nothing!” so 2012 was my year of planting.
Planting goes with persistence and patience: continuing in a course of action despite difficulty or opposition. Like strive Masiyiwa said: “One of the hallmarks of a good entrepreneur is persistence. However, persistence without insight will usually lead to the same result-failure”
Most times than not, you can not accomplish anything without persistence although you must know when to persist and when to withdraw and revise the approach or re-assess the situation or even change course completely if you must. Not just persisting even when all the signs need you to. Strive says “you must be persistent, yes, but you must first seek clarity and insight before trying again! How else can I approach this? what mistake did I make the last time? go over the minutest details, consult people who are more knowledgeable on the matter.
The lessons learnt or practiced in that year of beginning and over the past decade were persistence, patience and consistency. The knowing that things might not get easy at the beginning but what do you do? You remain the course and do your best until you find your break. Being able to wait calmly in the face of frustration or adversity. I always tell my teams that there is frustration or adversity nearly everywhere; whether you are the proprietor like I am, where you are the Managing Director of a big Company, whether you are an heir running your family business and whether you are an employee of a small, medium or large enterprise. so, we must learn to practice patience as a way of life.
Consistently being present and committed to what you are doing is another key. For me it has been telling myself that “you have to be in office whether you expect a client or not. That you turn up and wait for the client because the client is King!” sometimes the clients came, sometimes they did not but I never missed a day of work unless I really could not. I have learnt that Consistency leads to habits, and these habits eventually impact your productivity and performance.
According to Ryan Mitchell Rios and Mark Atalla, the difference between successful people and those who give up on their goals is consistency.
2013, we got my first big client and by the Grace of God we now offer external Legal Services to over Ten Financial Institutions among other notable customers. I believe that coming this far has been a result of my relentless quest for excellence.
I appreciate my staff, who have been making the magic happen over the past decade. And of course my premium clients with who I share this journey and partnership. Like I always tell all of them, when they shine, I shine!
Dream big, stay focused, make it happen!
Nassuuna Rebecca Irene
Founder
One of my favorite mantras is “Good Enough Never Is!”
Jim C. Collins in “Good to Great”: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t, describes how companies transition from being good companies to great companies, and how most companies fail to make the transition.
The critical question I always ask myself is “How can we do better tomorrow than we did today?” We must institutionalize this question as a way of life – as a habit of mind and action. How can we do better in the next decade? Superb execution and performance naturally come to the visionary organizations not so much as an end goal, but as the residual result of a never-ending cycle of self-stimulated improvement and investment for the future.
“There is no ultimate finish line in a highly visionary organization. Visionary organizations, attain their extraordinary position not so much because of superior insight or special ‘secrets’ of success, but largely because of the simple fact that they were so demanding of themselves. Becoming and remaining a visionary organization requires oodles of plain old-fashioned discipline, hard work, and a visceral revulsion to any tendency toward smug self-satisfaction.” Jim C. Collins
In conclusion, nothing in this world is easy unless you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth. And indeed no one is! And we are all capable of accomplishing great things. There are so many before us that have built legacies out of nothing and after enduring a lot of hardship. All you need is God, to persist, be patient and committed and to always be on a quest for excellence or to do better.
