July 14, 2013 by IFEANYI ONUBA
DAIRO
| credits: File copy
| credits: File copy
Mr. Remi Dairo is the founder, Solvere Word Consult. He speaks to IFEANYI ONUBA on the challenges of the business
What kind of business do you do?
My kind of business is productivity
solution providing service. Our organisation helps people and
organisations to increase productivity and enjoy maximum returns with
little and right efforts.
What motivated you into the business?
I decided to be an entrepreneur because
of my passion for it. I have always wanted to be independent,
self-employed. I take delight in helping people to get out of trouble. I
decided to extend that help to organisations by increasing their
productivity. I hate laziness, laxity and redundancy. I hate to see
people working hard and not working smart, It irritates me.
I am angry when job is not done with
excellence. Please note I did not just start business on passion but
until the passion was strong enough to take me through. You can be
passionate and not ready for business.
How long have you been in business?
I have been in business for the past seven years, doing nothing but productivity.
How do you manage your business?
Management of business is relative,
depending on the person and the style of leadership. I have permanent
staff and non permanent staff members. I have meetings with the team, we
do vision casting every week and we look at different strategies to
achieve our goals but I never box them.
I allow each and everyone to come up
with their best ways of getting result. Creativity and Innovation is one
of our pillars in Solvere Word Consult.
As a young man in business, who are your clients and how do you get them?
Basically, they are young business owners who are not finding things easy.
The peculiarity of my job as a
productivity expert has made us to have various kinds of clients in
Nigeria and abroad. Our new product, Personal Productivity Programme
(software) helps you to find your areas of productivity and maximise
your performance in life and career. This has widened our scope of
clientele.
We solve productivity challenges for
corporate organisations too; schools and colleges; parents and
guardians; students and individuals; undergraduate and unemployed youth
and others.
Do you need much funds to start the business?
My answer will be yes and no. Yes,
because we need to pay for our facilities that must be world-class, pay
overhead and for machines or tools that produce the products/services
that we present as solution to the people.
If it is not excellent and world-class, we would not go to the market, our product is our selling point.
On the other hand, I will say no because
I don’t need to get an office space to train, coach or consult for an
individual or organisation, just provide me a seat or a space for me to
be comfortable for someone to listen to me, then I am good to go. The
service I provide can be done in client’s office or a chosen venue of
top customers.
Will you advise fresh graduates to go into business?
Yes but they must find their personal
productivity profile to discover their passion and what they are wired
for. They should go ahead and do it. A copy of our personal productivity
programme will help them to achieve this in five minutes. Then, they
must find where to learn the skills relevant for the business they want
to go into.
Entrepreneurship is not an escape route;
it is more about developing the business skills to be able to survive
in this terrain. Entrepreneural success involves hard work and
creativity.
Do you need government’s support to succeed in entrepreneurship?
The government needs to provide an
enabling environment for small business to grow. Provision of soft loans
for start-up businesses will go a long way to eradicate poverty from
the grass roots.
The government should sponsor more young
people to the School of Productivity and other skill acquisition
centers to help them to acquire relevant skills, knowledge and attitude
applicable to their performance in business.
Training is key; we should not depend on
the academic knowledge to get the best out of these young people who
have business ideas.
What are the challenges you face in the business?
Without challenges, there is no
entrepreneurship. Business is borne out of challenges; it is the bedrock
of great entrepreneurs. So I see challenges as a springboard to
success. In Nigeria, there are many challenges in this business.
The major challenge is finance for
start-ups. Many have great business ideas but do not have the finance to
execute their projects. When you go to bank for a loan, collateral will
be required. Where would a small company find the required collateral
to be able to access the finance needed? So, project financing is one of
the major challenges.
How do you confront this challenge?
There are two ways to tackle this challenge.
First, get help from family and friends.
Second, find valuable things to exchange for money to start your
business. These two approaches, I have also adopted myself.
Getting finance for projects from banks
becomes a last resort. You can get money from family and friends if
people can trust you; integrity is the watchword here. You can also sell
valuable things that you keep at home to get ahead in your business.
Some people keep gold at home while their business suffers.
It is time people began to put more
value on their business than material things. If you cannot pay a price
for your business, nobody will put value on it for you. You can always
get the materials back when your business is on the rise.
What other investment principles are needed to succeed?
The key investment principle is what I
call ‘eat some, save some, and invest Some’. Anytime money comes into
your hand, you must follow the three principles. You need to eat some,
don’t kill yourself because you are saving, pleas, use some of the
proceeds of the business to take care of yourself. Spend. Some money on
good food, good clothes and books for personal development to build
youself for a better business.
The second level is savings; you need to
have a saving culture. Save something for the rainy day; keep something
from every income as savings. This culture can sustain the business.
The final part of the principle is investment. After you have saved, what you need to do is to invest the savings.
People ask me what do I do with my savings? I tell them invest it.
No comments:
Post a Comment