HOW TO DISCOVER GOOD BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES AROUND YOU

In the last edition, I talked about how and why you need to start a business alongside your current job. If you missed it, I advise you pick up the last edition of Citizen’s Advocate and read it. You will find it interesting, educating and inspiring. In this edition, I shall be talking about the sine qua non of starting a business; how to discover good business opportunities around you.

One of the foremost businessmen in Nigeria, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu would say: “A good businessman must have nose for business the same way a journalist has nose for news. Once your eyes, ears, nose, heart and brain are trained on business, you sniff business opportunities everywhere.”  This means that you first need to identify a viable business opportunity before you can engage in business.

Business opportunities abound everywhere but are discovered by only few. Out of the few, only a small fraction of them will actually move to the opportunity. But I believe that by the end of this article, you should be able to spot good business opportunities around and with the knowledge you will have acquired by diligently following me on this article, you will also be able to move into the opportunity without fear. Like I said in my previous articles, anybody can do it; whether employed, unemployed or self-employed, as long as you desire to do it.

Before you can easily identify business opportunities, you must have the desire and commitment to really start a business and so pay conscious attention to your environment. If you neither have the earnest desire to start a business, nor pay attention to your environment and live your life like every other person, then you might not be able to spot the opportunities when they surface. This is what makes businessmen and woman different from the rest of the people.

You may have missed many good opportunities in the past, there are more opportunities waiting ahead for you only if you will be keen on discovering them.

Now to the main topic of this article, how do you discover business opportunities around you? Let us look at some of the various ways through which you can discover good opportunities when they appear. Remember that you can only identify them when you have the earnest desire to start a business and are conscious of your environment:

UNMET NEED:
Human beings are insatiable and so their needs abound. As far as there are needs, businesses must exist to satisfy these needs. Now if there is a particular need or craze for a particular product in your locality which has not been met, then that is business for you if you can satisfy those needs. It is very possible that someone else or people may have stepped in to satisfy the need, but if the people who have these needs are greater than those satisfying it, then there is space for you and so a viable business for you.

For example: you are working in an office where lunch-time is very short and workers hurriedly go out to take lunch and rushes back to resume work. You can start a business around it by supplying them food and snacks in their office; saving them time and money. We will treat how to start a business successfully on part-time in subsequent editions.

Another example is this: You notice that in your area, people have a craze for fashion. You can start bringing in fashion items like clothes, shoes and jewellery and sell to them and make profits. It becomes easier for you since they know you in the neighborhood and already trusts you.

POOR QUALITY PRODUCT OR SERVICE:
Have you ever had cause to complain about a particular item or service rendered to you? Do you see others complaining about the same thing? If yes, then that is a viable business opportunity for you. For example, there was a bar around my locality that sells warm drinks rather than a cold one to people without remorse and on the premise that there is no constant electricity. Customers were complaining and the owner never cared. Few months later, another guy opened his own bar in the same locality and made sure his drinks were cold using his generator. You should guess what happened: The whole customers of the former guy left him and started patronizing the new one.

So, anytime you had any cause to complain for anything and you discover you are not the only one wearing such shoe, quickly move in to the opportunity if you are sure you can provide better quality service or product.

OVER-PRICED PRODUCT OR SERVICE:
Some entrepreneurs are good at selling their product or service at incredibly high price when they know that they are the only people selling such service or product. They keep at this even when customers are complaining, because they know that the customers have no option.

For example, in my town, Afikpo, there was a particular route that is mostly used by travelers going from my town to the state capital, Abakaliki, and there was only one mass transit company transporting them. This Mass Transit company treated the passengers anyhow, hiked price at will even when there was no justification, just because there was no option for the passengers. Another Mass Transit Company spotted it and started business on that route, at lower price and better passenger service. The passengers all left the former company for the new company and never came back. That former company died a natural death while the new company raked in money.

In a smaller dimension, this situation abounds too, where some shops close to living areas sell their products to inhabitants of such places at high prices because they are the nearest to the them. If you can provide such products or service at cheaper price, without compromising quality, then you are in for serious money making venture.

BUSINESS IDEA IMPORTATION:
If you travel to another location and find out that there is a particular business thriving there, which is not known in your own locality, then that is a good opportunity for you to import such idea into your locality and be the first to execute it and make all the money there before any other person thinks of it. I know of one guy that travelled to Lagos and saw how Indomie was commercially cooked with fried eggs and how consumers lined up for it. He immediately started such business here in Abakaliki when he came back. He made huge money from this particular business before others entered into the same line of business. But even with other people in the business, he was still known and recognized as the original indomie cook.

So when next you travel to visit your friends, for conferences or business meetings in other cities, open your eyes to know what is thriving there. You could make a fortune from it if you start it in your area.

NEW POLICIES AND LAWS:
It is wise to know what is happening around you, especially if you are business-oriented. New policies and laws can be made by the government or by your organization which creates a market for a particular product or services. For instance, the closure of Okada plying the double-lane roads in the State Capital created the market for the business which Keke-Napep (tricycles) are now enjoying and making money from. A ban on big bikes (kymco, etc) will create a market for small bikes (ladies machine) as might soon occur in the State Capital.

These are just some of the ways through which you can identify good business opportunities. From these techniques, you will discover that you need to have that desire and commitment to start a business before your senses can be activated to identify good business opportunities, thus the essence of having the prerequisites mentioned earlier.

After spotting a good business idea, you are not to just jump into it. You need to conduct a thorough feasibility study on the idea and develop a good business plan for it. If you fail to conduct such study, you might have a lot to risk. This is the problem that many would-be entrepreneurs face, which throws them out of business very early; they just jump into opportunities without proper analysis and plan. So if you don’t want to be out of business due to failure, you should conduct a thorough study on the viability of the business.

In our next edition, I will be telling you how to do a feasibility study for your business idea before starting out so as to avoid some of the hiccups associated with starting and running a business.

Till then, keep your eyes open and keep spotting new opportunities; you might hit a fortune from it.

For questions, comments, suggestion, recommendation or enquiry, send an email to enyumpatrick@yahoo.com  or send a text message only to 07063018638. Please remember to add your name.