11 WHY AND HOW YOU SHOULD START YOUR OWN BUSINESS

WHY AND HOW YOU SHOULD START YOUR OWN BUSINESS

When you invest in shares, you are just investing in someone else’s business. So when they make profit, they share it with you. Likewise, when you work for someone, you are merely helping the person to grow his business. But what about making profit and owning the whole profit, and having other people work to help you grow your business? This is exactly the reason why starting your own business might be the best decision you can make. It doesn’t matter whether you are a civil servant or private employee, or even an unemployed. What matters is that you can start a business either full time or part time, or directly or indirectly.

Business in our perspective here means any activity that involves exchange of goods and or services for money. The size doesn’t matter. It could be as small as selling your recharge cards to your friends in the office, teaching your colleagues how to operate a computer, or as big as having a pure water production company or manufacturing plant. As long as you make or made money from it, you have just transacted business.

I am working for someone and already earning good money, so why should I bother starting a business? This has been the question lurking the minds of many civil servants. If you read my article on the need for having multiple streams of income, you may have known the need by now. The benefits of starting a business whether full time or part time cannot be overemphasized. Let us look at some of them:

HUGE PROFIT:
You can make money from stocks, real estates, bonds, etc. But none can give you a profit that can rival your own business. Ask any business man around you and you will discover that they make over 1000% profit in their business in a year or less. Never under-rate any small business you see someone doing because the profit he or she is generating might be far bigger than your salary. I have seen very petty businesses whose income in a month run in hundreds of thousands.

Now I am not saying you should quit your job and go into business. No! You can start on part-time basis and make extra income. Besides, many big businesses started on part-time.

EXTRA INCOME:
If you are working for someone, your only source of income would be the salary you are receiving (except for those who steal the money under their care) which most if not all the time, cannot satisfy your basic needs. So you will always require an additional income to support your salary. Having a business running alongside your current job can always guarantee you have the extra fund needed for those emergency expenses that come up. Imagine that you do not have an additional source of income and your salary has not been paid, and your ward suddenly falls terribly sick? What will you do? Go borrowing? Having a business can help you in times like this.

GROWTH POTENTIAL:
Most big businesses you see today started as a very small business. You might be lucky to have the small business you started on part-time grow into a very big business employing labor and generating you unimaginable profits. Besides, the best time to start a business is when you are still working for someone since you can be able to test the waters with your legs before diving into it.

RETIREMENT:
Many workers today do not know the boredom that can be experienced during retirement stage. During retirement, you will have excess time and nothing to do with it. You might even go about looking for job to keep you busy and bring you funds and you may not see. My boss suffered this and I knew what he went through during that time.

But if you have a business which you may have started while you were still working for someone, you will easily retire into it and grow it into bigger level since you will now work full time on building it. With this, you will never experience boredom, lack of cash or go looking for new jobs.

These are few of the many reasons why you should consider starting a business. I want you to think about these two statements attributed to the former Chief Executive Officer of Intercontinental Bank Plc, Dr Erastus Akingbola. He said: “An employee can never be rich” and “promotion is a way of trapping the best employee”. If your intention is to retire rich or have a steady source of income even when you are out of work, then starting a business will be the way to go. Don’t be wooed by the fat salary you are receiving; you still need to start your own.

You can make up to 1000% profit in a business, yes! But this does not come without its inherent risks and challenges. Most new businesses fail as quickly as they are started. This is not meant to scare you because you can reduce the chances of failing in any business by having a good knowledge of the business and with a good business plan. I will talk about this in subsequent articles.

Now, starting a business can be done directly or indirectly. By indirectly starting a business, I mean sponsoring someone who has a good business idea, has the knowledge and experience to run it, but without capital. In such venture, you will have a stake in the business and partake in the sharing of the profits and losses. Though very profitable, it is highly risky because your money can be lost in a swipe. So I highly recommend you do a thorough check on the venture and have enough legal back-up before embarking on it.

By directly starting a new business, I mean discovering a business opportunity yourself, gathering the required knowledge and or experience and going ahead to embark on it. We will get into more details as we progress in this article.

I have had many people asking me this question: what business can I start with so and so amount of money? There are many types of businesses to start up, but it all depends on you: where you live and your aversions.

First, a business that thrives in Lagos might not thrive in Abakaliki and another that thrives in Abakaliki might not work in Lagos. This is due to many reasons like income of the people, tastes, behaviors, beliefs, etc. What people like here may not interest people down there, for example, selling beer in the North might not thrive because of their religious restrictions. So trying to go into “beer parlor” business there may not work no matter how profitable it might be in other parts of the country.

Secondly, you might have an aversion for a particular type of business and so no matter how profitable it might look, you might not engage in it. For instance, I passionately hate live animals. So no matter the type of profits raked in by people who rear animals, I will not dream of starting such a business directly.

This is why answering the question on the type of business to start is always ambiguous and can be misleading.

Therefore, if you dream of starting a business, you first need to learn how to discover the various business opportunities around you. This is quite simple if you will commit to learn it. When you have discovered a very good opportunity that can thrive in your area, the next thing you do is to get as much information as you can about it and then test for its feasibility. When you have tested and confirmed that it can thrive in your area, you can either start full-time or part-time, according to the amount of time available to you.

This may look like a big and complex work for you, but my intention in this series is to simplify the whole process and make you itch to start your own business as soon as possible. The good thing about starting a business is that you can always start small and grow from there.

Like I said earlier, many big businesses you see today started as a small business and steadily grew to the level at which you are now seeing it. So be willing to start a business because you might be lucky to have yours grow into a very big firm in the nearest future.

There are hundreds of viable businesses you can start, but that is if it will thrive in your area and you have the capacity in terms of time and knowledge to man in. All you have to do is to follow me on my next article series where I will start by teaching you how to discover business opportunities around you and how to venture into them. Until then, keep investing right!

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