I think wealth creation is directly proportional to problem solving, but rather, our youths are looking in the direction of creating more problems while the government is still living in uhuru, knowing absolutely not what to do to solve the problems, thereby compounding the matters at hand.
Briefly, below are certain reasons I have observed entrepreneurs face challenges in their businesses.
1. Your Business is a Company
Many people do business as though it's a game. In a game, you play to win and at times you lose. But in business, you follow certain rules and you believe to win. You don't gamble with your business as you do with a game.
If you run your business without the right mechanisms in place, how do you intend to succeed in it? How do you expect people to trust and believe in your project and ideas.
It is important, you study a big company you want to be like and understand how they run their company while you develop your company structure to succeed. like them because, one day you will become as big or even bigger than these.
2. Get Your Papers Intact
I have seen many ideas go under the grave because they do not prepare for the right opportunities that come their ways. I have also missed out on vital opportunities myself for lack of proper documentation.Amongst the papers that can not be compromised are;
*Your company must be registered - ensure all your CAC papers are intact and always handy.
*You must have a valid means of Identification - be it driver's licence, INEC voter's card, National ID or International Passport. Any of these four is important to ascertain your identity.
* Have your Tax Identification Number - This is important and endeavour to remit monthly whatever Value Added Tax you have collected from your customers. This is the law.
* Very importantly, your Account Books - Even if you can not prepare statement of account yet and can't afford an accountant, ensure you have your daily cash book where you write all your daily expenses.
* Your business plan or a business brief must be handy always. This is your first marketing tool to anyone interested in your business either a buyer or a partner (since investors are not seen on a platter of gold, though they exist all around us).
* Your customers list - It is important that you have contacts of all your customers handy always. Except you have over 500 but if less, then it is your duty to always keep in touch, as out of sight is out of mind. For sure with this, you will succeed better.
3. Business Requires Faith
No doubt faith is required to succeed in any business. Have you wondered how a bakery would produce 1000 loaves of bread and before end of day all the bread is sold out, even where there are competition, every bread still sells. It is also possible for a brand with good name not to sell, but with faith, the food seller makes enough she believes she can sell, the ice cream guy goes on the street to hawk, with faith shoprite stock their shelves believing you will come to buy, MTN produces sim cards for you to buy and Apple sold over 4million units of iPhone6 in few hours after it's release even when the phone is not available yet.Do you have faith in your idea? Faith in your business is not negotiable. Those who fail in business, actually lost faith in their business.
4. It's All about the Customer
No matter the kind of business anyone runs, if there are no customers, you are out of business. You must go to where your customers are. where they will easily locate you. You must serve your customers exceptionally well. In this age and time where 100 people provide the same service and everyone is online, you have no monopoly of any market anymore.I know ladies who order almost all of their wardrobe from alibaba.com, asos.com etc and they ignore their locate friends and designers who can give them fantastic service, because the business guy here have not taken them as serious customers. So, do not ignore the little girl and boy in your class or compound, serve them well.
Serve all your customers very well, because in their hands lie your wealth.
5. Business Success is a Game of Numbers
Everything in life revolves around Numbers. Football prosper because of the number of people watching globally. Imagine a stadium of 60,000 spectators paying just #200, that would make #12,000,000 (twelve million naira only) from one match compared to a basketball that can not seat 2000 spectators at the same time.
Everything in business is about numbers. How many people know about your company?
How many customers do you have?Have many staff do you have? The more you have, the more business you can do?
How far is your geography? Just a LGA, state or the continent?
How much turn over are you doing? #1million a month or #1million a year?
Everything revolves around numbers. So, make concerted effort to increase all the figures that need to be increased and reduce all the bad figures that need to be reduced.
Share your thoughts and results after now. I will be glad to hear from you.
Sunday Obanubi
Your Business Doctor
@RHegosNG
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