Sometimes a single business idea can be one of the causes of bankruptcy. Some organizations would have remained in business if they had known the strategy to differentiating and dissociating business ideas and personalities. Don’t throw away your money in today’s world of business, where the Dollar is crashing in value and the Cedis is rising in the same market. It shows that just anything can happen. And that applies to anyone and any business. Sometimes the best thing to do in business is to remain naïve because overconfidence can devastate even big corporation faster than you can imagine.
Today there are still misconceptions about what a good business idea is. Some people may refer to a good business as the one that has potential. Others may call it a business that can yield profit in short time. Another may define a good business as one that has the characteristics of perpetuity irrespective of who comes along to run it. The question is what do you want to build? Do you want to build a good business or the best business around? If you wanted the best corporation, then what does it take to build it?
One of the things that it takes to build the best corporation is brilliant idea. There are good idea, bad idea and brilliant idea! Investors are looking for brilliant idea. The difference in these three kinds of ideas will determine where your business will end. If your business is built on a good idea. It is a matter of time. If it is built on a bad idea, it may get obsolete. People can easily point to where your company used to stand each time they drive past. If it is not built on a bad idea, then why are you struggling in it? What makes that business stand out? How is it brilliant than others? It may not bring the result you want in the immediate period but it will not bring you into loss either. So a business that is hanging in the balance can still be a brilliant idea? Wait and read on. I understand that you want to know what it takes for a business to skyrocket.
I remember how I have invested into some business ideas without considering the principles I am about to share with you. I thought that mere consulting was all it takes. I thought that having good intention was all it takes. So I consulted with an “expert” but I still ended up losing my money. Accurate analysis of these principles I am about discussing will save you from losing money. I learnt them in a hard way and that is why I can make bold to say that it is not enough to have an idea. It is important to scrutinize the idea. Some ideas are mere charm. They look golden but lack substance. Meanwhile some ideas appear ludicrous yet they are very lucrative and worth all the risk. Hurriedly embracing an idea will be tantamount to throwing away your money. Moving from loss to loss can dampen your spirit and self esteem even though it’s been said that success is moving from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.
This is an age of innovation where all idea has to be analyzed. This is because some ideas can wreck your life investment faster than you can ever imagine. What it takes to know they are superficial is a closer look. An objective stare, a more intentional analysis on the ideas will show you all the loop holes. The litmus for business idea in our environment has to transcend feelings and sentiments. Ideas have got to be tested based on facts. Let me quickly take you through the basics. The three basic tenets of any brilliant ideas are as follows:
#1. Evaluation: This is the step one in the scrutiny. The step by step of what the business will cost. Costing in terms of future value of the money invested. A brilliant evaluation leads to a successful business. A good evaluation of the business idea will show you how the idea will sell. It will address what it will cost to execute and when will the business break even? Reaching a point like this is easy in costing and budgeting. The question is this. How much would it cost to take it off the ground? If the amount expected to take the business off the floor is too outrageous and higher than necessary, it may be a red flag. If the business will gulp more at the beginning such that few amounts of money will trickle in at the break even period which may even take several months than necessary? It may be a bad idea to invest in it. You need to ask: at what point precisely will that business break will even. What will be the requirements for that to happen? At this stage, what does the business posses and what does it require? If it possess nothing and require everything from you. Execution of the idea may be unnecessary once it has failed evaluation test.
#2. Market! A ready market! And desperate Market! Another thing is who are the audience that will benefit from the business idea? You need to seek your customers first before you search for investor. Who are your clients and Customers? Are they asking for the product or services you are planning to sell or you are just thinking they will ask for it when you bring it to them? When you bring it on them, without their actual need of it, you will be at their mercy because they may not even want your product and services at all. You are going to be appealing to pity if you don’t gather customers first!
#3. Your experience: What is your track record? Have you done this before? What do you know about this business? Who have done it before? Why did those people succeed or fail? What was your result like when you did it? Are you planning to do it the same way they did it? What will make you stand out? This third principle is another thing investors are very concerned about. They don’t want to just throw their money into garbage. What have you sold so far concerning the product or service? Is this idea going to sell without manipulations? This third principle will prove your business idea. Don’t go into business idea without checking these things first. Don’t invest your money without understanding these theories.
Showing posts with label enterpreneur. Show all posts
Showing posts with label enterpreneur. Show all posts
Monday, October 12, 2009
Saturday, May 2, 2009
“What you are doing wrong, that big corporations are doing right”
Let me fill you in on secrets and strategies of big corporations. What most entrepreneurs don’t understand is that they have sufficient potentials to beat “the big guys” in those big buildings. All you’ve got is more than enough to blaze the trail in the business world. May be you don’t recognize this. Let me list them for you. You have got your integrity, hard work, diligence, authenticity and above all, vision. You always deposit some vital part of you into every product and services that goes out from you. You are always there. How do I know that? You are here now reading this just because you want to improve your entrepreneurial skill! And you are always ready to learn. You want to give your all just to make your business a success. You’ve got it!
Truth be told, big corporations don’t always have it all together. They have politics, politicking, backstabbing, absence of authenticity, deficiency of integrity and more. All the worst things you can ever imagine are going underneath in some big corporations. They just try to cover it all up. And they do that by playing on the figment of your imagination in the way they use resources extravagantly. They appear flawless in the media, by adjusting reports, results and presentations. By showing just what they want you to see. By using false impression, phasard of confidence, branding gimmicks to work on your psyche. By thoughtful use of colours, advertisement, public relations techniques and more; by use of premeditated application of bank loans to sensitive emotional areas of human lives. By deliberately creating relationship with influential people, leaders, people in power; by adopting team spirit so that the strength of all cover the weakness of one. By rewarding stakeholders on paper even when in reality they have nothing, they have managed to create a buy in, a trusting strategy, a process with which they are able to convince you and I. They make us conclude that they don’t really need our money because they have more patronage. And thereby they have stylishly increased their sales and profit margins. These are just few of the secrets of increasing sales in the corporate business world.
However, on your part, you’ve been working tirelessly day and night, often going overtime to make it through in your business. They have always worked 9 to 5; and go on vacations while other staffs fill in for them. Thereby they are able to avoid burnouts and depression. What I am trying to show you here is that there is a subtle power of phasard, delusion and more in all they do. These are the secrets of big corporations. I have studied big corporations for some time and I have discovered that the more you look, the less you see. When you pierce through the blinds to the offices of the managers, all you see are people like you and I who are smart in maximizing potentials of other employees. By delegating work to team members and just doing whatever they know how best to do on their desks, they achieve more as a team. They have been able to produce more result better than the average entrepreneur who works alone on his business at the corner of the street somewhere.
There is an unquantifiable, immaculate power and productivity that comes from every entrepreneur who goes about his business with an extraordinary passion for what he does, with an undying love for his customers/clients and with an undying determination and dedication to success. I tell you this: You can grow better than big corporations if you can learn the good things they are doing and apply them to your business. For instance, rather than worrying about start up capital, you can deliberately build a winning team through partnership with people of like minds to raise capital for your business. Drive is one of those unnoticed things that distinguish the rich from the poor, the successful from the failures, and the ordinary from the great folks. People with drive are always on the go. They are ever looking on the horizon of improvement. You will wonder why some employees get promoted faster than their colleagues in big corporations. Sometimes, it is in the way they go about their roles at the workplace. The attitude and passion they add as spice. They have managed to become assets such that the organization can not do without them. I don’t call it luck. I call it drive! In order for your business to succeed you will need to develop your drive, have an understanding of the terrain, flexibility to change what is not working as soon as you discover that in your business. Extend your reach, by deliberately advancing your business environment in terms of who gets access to your product and services. I cannot overemphasis this that entrepreneurs need real drive to succeed in business.
Contrary to the myth that all he has to do is to assemble all the resources together and go to bed. An entrepreneur must be tutored! He needs information, strategies and continuous unstoppable action. The 21st century entrepreneur needs to understand that things are changing at the speed of light and businesses are evolving with time just as trends. Some basic things such as customer relations, quality product and services may remain the same in business but there is advancement in promotion, presentations, sales strategies, advertisement, which must be carefully presented. This is the rationale for branding your business uniquely. You cannot afford to present your business raw or mechanically to your customers and expect to out-sell your competition. You cannot get all the resources together and dump everything in the hands of a manager and expect him to work magic. There is a negative attitude in our present day entrepreneurs which I have seen. And that is, they want the money in the business but not the perspiration involved. This has made some entrepreneur lose their investment. An entire organization has gone down through mismanagement, bankruptcy, fraud and more. You are not free to go to sleep on your business yet. You have to go the extra mile on it. You need to be the cheer leader who motivate and encourage your staff. This is because the business atmosphere is not conducive as it should. You need to continually appreciate your sales people and encourage them to do more. Therefore, it takes an extraordinary push. Customer volume cannot increase by mere advertisement. You need to establish a bond with each customer such that they feel valued beyond the transaction.
In ideal environment, where the system works smoothly; where the government serve responsibly in playing her role. In settings where corruption is missing; in a place where you can just place your product on shelves and customers will walk in and purchase them without you having to be in touch with them. Then, you may not need drive as such. However, in this situation, you will need some force, energy, gut to push a little more. You will need more than mere push, to get the result you want. You will have to work at your best practice, auditing your business for what big organizations are doing right that you have been doing wrong. Set up a microcosm system that mirrors them. Simulate their strategies in a small scale and you will see the difference.
It is not in the number of hours given to the business alone, it depends on the quality of time, and the appropriateness of whatever you are doing. For instance, if you spend over ten hours at work doing the wrong thing. It does not matter how much sincere you are in a wrong thing. You are wrong! The question is what precisely are we supposed to be doing that we are not doing? What is the quality of our result, how productive are we? What is our yardstick? How are we measuring how progress? What result are we getting with respect to our target on profit? What is the actual goal we have set? How are we measuring them? What new target have we set after reaching the previous ones? Then we need to measure ourselves against these criteria. The most vital of all is to work on our relationships with people. People will become your customers/clients. Your customers/clients are people. In business world, you cannot reach anywhere without people’s involvement in your business. No business is run in vacuum. However, you need to know that people may buy your product based on pity but they will never stay with you forever if you keep producing sub-standard products and reeling out ineffective services. You will only lose all your customers to competition. That is why you must deliver a quality and affordable product because people want value for their money. You will only be patronized for a season. And people always want value for their money. Nobody in their right mind resist quality product and services. As you go out to take on your business world, I dare you to make these adjustments and you will see the difference. Believe in yourself. Value yourself. Believe in your business; value your staffs, and customers. Develop a unique product or service, get better at it. Believe in it. Go all out and offer the world what you’ve got because that is it! That is what the world need. You’ve got what the world wants. You’ve got it!
Truth be told, big corporations don’t always have it all together. They have politics, politicking, backstabbing, absence of authenticity, deficiency of integrity and more. All the worst things you can ever imagine are going underneath in some big corporations. They just try to cover it all up. And they do that by playing on the figment of your imagination in the way they use resources extravagantly. They appear flawless in the media, by adjusting reports, results and presentations. By showing just what they want you to see. By using false impression, phasard of confidence, branding gimmicks to work on your psyche. By thoughtful use of colours, advertisement, public relations techniques and more; by use of premeditated application of bank loans to sensitive emotional areas of human lives. By deliberately creating relationship with influential people, leaders, people in power; by adopting team spirit so that the strength of all cover the weakness of one. By rewarding stakeholders on paper even when in reality they have nothing, they have managed to create a buy in, a trusting strategy, a process with which they are able to convince you and I. They make us conclude that they don’t really need our money because they have more patronage. And thereby they have stylishly increased their sales and profit margins. These are just few of the secrets of increasing sales in the corporate business world.
However, on your part, you’ve been working tirelessly day and night, often going overtime to make it through in your business. They have always worked 9 to 5; and go on vacations while other staffs fill in for them. Thereby they are able to avoid burnouts and depression. What I am trying to show you here is that there is a subtle power of phasard, delusion and more in all they do. These are the secrets of big corporations. I have studied big corporations for some time and I have discovered that the more you look, the less you see. When you pierce through the blinds to the offices of the managers, all you see are people like you and I who are smart in maximizing potentials of other employees. By delegating work to team members and just doing whatever they know how best to do on their desks, they achieve more as a team. They have been able to produce more result better than the average entrepreneur who works alone on his business at the corner of the street somewhere.
There is an unquantifiable, immaculate power and productivity that comes from every entrepreneur who goes about his business with an extraordinary passion for what he does, with an undying love for his customers/clients and with an undying determination and dedication to success. I tell you this: You can grow better than big corporations if you can learn the good things they are doing and apply them to your business. For instance, rather than worrying about start up capital, you can deliberately build a winning team through partnership with people of like minds to raise capital for your business. Drive is one of those unnoticed things that distinguish the rich from the poor, the successful from the failures, and the ordinary from the great folks. People with drive are always on the go. They are ever looking on the horizon of improvement. You will wonder why some employees get promoted faster than their colleagues in big corporations. Sometimes, it is in the way they go about their roles at the workplace. The attitude and passion they add as spice. They have managed to become assets such that the organization can not do without them. I don’t call it luck. I call it drive! In order for your business to succeed you will need to develop your drive, have an understanding of the terrain, flexibility to change what is not working as soon as you discover that in your business. Extend your reach, by deliberately advancing your business environment in terms of who gets access to your product and services. I cannot overemphasis this that entrepreneurs need real drive to succeed in business.
Contrary to the myth that all he has to do is to assemble all the resources together and go to bed. An entrepreneur must be tutored! He needs information, strategies and continuous unstoppable action. The 21st century entrepreneur needs to understand that things are changing at the speed of light and businesses are evolving with time just as trends. Some basic things such as customer relations, quality product and services may remain the same in business but there is advancement in promotion, presentations, sales strategies, advertisement, which must be carefully presented. This is the rationale for branding your business uniquely. You cannot afford to present your business raw or mechanically to your customers and expect to out-sell your competition. You cannot get all the resources together and dump everything in the hands of a manager and expect him to work magic. There is a negative attitude in our present day entrepreneurs which I have seen. And that is, they want the money in the business but not the perspiration involved. This has made some entrepreneur lose their investment. An entire organization has gone down through mismanagement, bankruptcy, fraud and more. You are not free to go to sleep on your business yet. You have to go the extra mile on it. You need to be the cheer leader who motivate and encourage your staff. This is because the business atmosphere is not conducive as it should. You need to continually appreciate your sales people and encourage them to do more. Therefore, it takes an extraordinary push. Customer volume cannot increase by mere advertisement. You need to establish a bond with each customer such that they feel valued beyond the transaction.
In ideal environment, where the system works smoothly; where the government serve responsibly in playing her role. In settings where corruption is missing; in a place where you can just place your product on shelves and customers will walk in and purchase them without you having to be in touch with them. Then, you may not need drive as such. However, in this situation, you will need some force, energy, gut to push a little more. You will need more than mere push, to get the result you want. You will have to work at your best practice, auditing your business for what big organizations are doing right that you have been doing wrong. Set up a microcosm system that mirrors them. Simulate their strategies in a small scale and you will see the difference.
It is not in the number of hours given to the business alone, it depends on the quality of time, and the appropriateness of whatever you are doing. For instance, if you spend over ten hours at work doing the wrong thing. It does not matter how much sincere you are in a wrong thing. You are wrong! The question is what precisely are we supposed to be doing that we are not doing? What is the quality of our result, how productive are we? What is our yardstick? How are we measuring how progress? What result are we getting with respect to our target on profit? What is the actual goal we have set? How are we measuring them? What new target have we set after reaching the previous ones? Then we need to measure ourselves against these criteria. The most vital of all is to work on our relationships with people. People will become your customers/clients. Your customers/clients are people. In business world, you cannot reach anywhere without people’s involvement in your business. No business is run in vacuum. However, you need to know that people may buy your product based on pity but they will never stay with you forever if you keep producing sub-standard products and reeling out ineffective services. You will only lose all your customers to competition. That is why you must deliver a quality and affordable product because people want value for their money. You will only be patronized for a season. And people always want value for their money. Nobody in their right mind resist quality product and services. As you go out to take on your business world, I dare you to make these adjustments and you will see the difference. Believe in yourself. Value yourself. Believe in your business; value your staffs, and customers. Develop a unique product or service, get better at it. Believe in it. Go all out and offer the world what you’ve got because that is it! That is what the world need. You’ve got what the world wants. You’ve got it!
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