You are not cut out for just any business

September 12, 2012 by Ola Emmanuel (oakmedia@yahoo.com) 

For the sake of those who have been sending mails about their intention to go into business but do not know what business to do, let’s apply a break on the business plan series and move a little back to the fundamentals of entrepreneurship.

Because there is some amount of money in their hands, quite a lot of people in a slapdash fashion pick on just any business to do. People who have just moved out of job with retirement benefits, severance pay, pensions and gratuity payments are most guilty of this.

But certain businesses may not thrive in certain hands. It is very important that the business you want to do match who you are, i.e. your personality. It is when this matching is done and you are able to analyse and prioritise that you can be sure you can turn the business around successfully. Quite a lot of people don’t know this or they overlook it. But failure to pass through this stage often leads to unsuccessful outing in businesses – wasted time, wasted efforts, lost money, disillusionment, discouragement and, sometimes, untimely death.

In line with the objective of this column, we shall examine various issues associated with running a thriving business, including preparations required before a business should start and the fundamental aspects of business planning while not neglecting critical things that will make a business stand firm and grow. In the same vein, we will not overlook experiences of existing business operators so that mistakes can be avoided and good strategy replicated. The end-result is that many Nigerians, in their millions, should run successful businesses at micro, small, medium and large scale levels. If this can be achieved, turning around the economic fortune of this country and tackling the unemployment challenges would be easy.

The business of your choice must pass initial test:

The idea of business some people are doing came from suggestions from other persons. Some people only took notice of business men and women, they knew someone around has been making money therefore they should do what the ‘successful people’ are doing. Though someone may be lucky to start a business this way, but this approach is wrong and may not guarantee you the desired business breakthrough.

You should be ‘disturbed’ about what business you should really do. This disturbance means it is not every business that occurs to you or that someone points out to you that you should jump at without thorough scrutiny. When you are too desperate, emotions run high and your eyes. This often leads to mistakes. You have to be less emotional and less desperate.

If you want to start a business but don’t know what it should be, it is better. You are in a better position because you can be helped to generated basket of ideas out of which you can choose one. But whoever already has a business in mind should ask himself, “What can I do that I will be successful?”

Answering this is a lot of work. It requires a lot of planning. Know what business to do require you going through a process – the self identification, the ideas generation, the environmental analysis, the idea analysis, the prioritisation, and the selection. Each of these processes will reveal some strategies that when you apply them, you will discover the business you love to do and several others you may even go into if you have the means. Where you lack the skill to carry out this task, you may need to employ the services of a good consultant or attend training so that you can be baked thoroughly in business plan preparation.

When you are at work, it should be as if you are playing. If you are doing what you love, you will not be bored. Therefore, your first concern should be about meeting people’s needs in the area of your skill, talent or competence before you decide what products you should bring out to meet the needs. But also, you should be concerned about costs, prices, skills available, experiences, people’s wants and profits. These issues you have to juggle very well. It is no mean task.

When you notice an opportunity or a business occur to you, it must be well thought-through, then a business idea be developed. It is this aspect of business idea development that differentiate how two people engaging in the same type of business run their businesses that they each have unique way of doing the same thing yet they never lack patronage because their clients could see something different.