Hi,
My name is Tawheed.
If you are a business owner, or you’re thinking about starting a business, or you’re an employee managing a business which I like to term as an “intrapreneur”, then you are in the right place because this content is for you.
A little bit about me – I am a Chartered Accountant, I run a management consulting firm and other successful businesses.
And you must be wondering, how can you start your business? You need money, but you have no money. I am here to tell you that you can start any business with ZERO ₦aira. Dangote did it, Tony Elumelu did it, I did it, and you too can do it.
Trust me, it is not as easy as it sounds. Resilience is the key!
I am seated here today as someone whose CV has been used a mug saucer. That experience taught me the importance of destiny being in my hands and I have the ability to change it.
So let me ask you, Give me ₦10 million? As bizarre as that question sounds, you must be thinking about how you can find ₦10 million, and that you don’t have it. That is the exact mindset you need to start a business.
Give yourself daunting tasks and believe in yourself, you can do it. How I started OLAYEMI & COMPANY for instance was years looking for my first accounting job, I got that through X (formerly known as Twitter). My eldest brother sent me a post at the time, I got the job after being passed on for 8 months. That experience just taught me the importance of making the best use of the circumstance in which I found myself.
Eight months later, I was reinterviewed by my late mentor. In the process I was doubling as an Audit Trainee for my mentor’s accounting firm. I just took a look at my mentor, rather than retiring, he was in his 50s at the time, I was in my late 20s, he decided to start his own accounting firm and most of his peers did not really think about their retirement plans until you know that period was around the corner.
I realized quickly then that it was necessary for me to start thinking about my own retirement plans even though I was just starting my career. So I began doing my mentor’s job for him, I didn’t mind that because I was learning, and that helped build confidence in me, and made me realize that I could actually become an entrepreneur one day.
I was working as the Company Accountant at an IT Firm, so it’s a Microsoft partner, and the Microsoft tools that we used internally, and as well as those that other businesses used, our company provided that and it included ancillary services. So I was using the QuickBooks accounting software for my own job, and because of the space that I found myself in and, my interest in understanding each of the business in which I was working in, that LED me to explore the opportunities that was or that presented itself within QuickBooks.
So what I did then? After months of studying and undergoing the certification process, I migrated QuickBooks account onto my own portal, and just like that I became a QuickBooks partner and a reseller. At the time I was not even charging a markup or a margin for this QuickBooks to my company. It just open my eyes to the opportunity that was within QuickBooks, and I was able to, through word of mouth market QuickBooks to people around me, and that was how OLAYEMI & COMPANY was born without even providing any service.
Back in the day while I used to sit for my ICAN exams, I remember always writing OLAYEMI & COMPANY while attempting to answer those questions and the case studies. In my psyche at the time, I was more or less building the accounting firm which is now the management consulting firm that it is today serving multiple clients and saving millions in costs.
Now what some people tend to do is you wait until they are in a dire need to start a business, they might have lost a job may be they have some savings or not or they are unemployed and I’ve been there too, I mean after my NYSC I remember wanting to start a bakery. I love confectionery and there was a new bakery in town 2 1 2, and I felt I needed ₦10 million to start or to set up.
You know Dangote did not start his cement factory at the level that he started it, he was already into some other businesses. And right now he’s building another factory in Ogun state. So the truth is that the level in which you want to start a business is not level you should actually start. So if you are thinking more around this level up here, what you should really think about is down here because this is the feasible point or feasible starting point.
You know the idea is not to belittle your ambition, once you do your research, market analysis and all that, you would realize that where you should actually start is at the barest minimum.
In the next episode, I am going to be talking about the fundamentals of starting a business, the important factors you need to consider to start a business.
So think BIG, start small.
Thanks for reading.