Today, I am going to talk about the fundamentals of starting a business and the factors you need to consider before starting your business.
So my name is Tawheed and this is The Big Boss Pod. If you are new here thank you so much for joining and if you are a returning reader, thanks for your audience.
Before starting your business all you need is a PLAN. Most people refer to this as a business plan. So I would like for you to just set aside all you know about a business plan, the things you have learnt about what a business plan entails from your school, open your mind and put all those aside. I will talk about a conference I attended recently and there was a speech by Mai Atafo, who is a global renowned fashion designer.
He talked about his history, starting the ATAFO brand back in the days after leaving his paid employment. To cut the long story short, I don’t know if this analogy was framed by him or it was adapted from somewhere. However, I am going to share it because it is such relatable content and it is my goal to share strategies that you can implement today to start your business and grow it.
So, basically you want to start a business, having identified what the opportunity is, the next thing you need to think about is, how do you attract customers? How do you get these customers to pay for the services you render or the products that you sell?
For someone like me that’s deals in QuickBooks Online accounting software, so it’s cloud based, you can log in from anywhere and any device, enter your data, spool your reports. And this accounting software is a solution that you pay for it on a monthly business, you can decide to pay monthly, quarterly, whatever suits you.
Anyway, for Mai Atafo on the other and he is a fashion designer, he needs to sell clothes. So you need think about what you need to pay your bills, for your sustenance so you can keep at it in terms of building your business in a sustainable fashion.
So, if I use my firm for instance, in one of the products that we sell being QuickBooks Online. If I need to sell ₦5 million worth of this product and say I have this product selling at ₦50k, it means I need a hundred customers for a period of, you know, a month to pay my bills. And then net off all the expenses that my business entails.
That is basically what’s my business plan is, I need a hundred customers to sell QuickBooks Online products tool at ₦50k so I can make ₦5 million, then from it I am going to get my profit where I will remove my expenses and then pay my bills, and then I can continue for the following month. So everything that I need to do in terms of getting these customers, keeping them, ensuring that the services or the product is fit for propose and to keep them returning, these whole activities are what my plan is essentially.
So don’t let anybody tell you that you cannot do it, don’t let anyone kill your ambition. All you need to do is just break it down to the barest minimum and think about how you can attract these customers. So that is the first step, now the second stage to this is you need to think about how you want to STRUCTURE a business. Are you a sole proprietor that just wants to go into business using your personal accounts and render this service as an individual or you want to register a business and structure it as a different entity separate from the owner.
You can register as a business name or limited liability company for starters. And this is something that you can do on your own, you do not necessarily need to incur legal fees or financial consultancy costs from a Lawyer or Chartered Accountant that can help you with registering the business. You can just go to CAC, sign up, follow the prompts, fill in all your information, make your payment and after some days you are going to be able to download your documents.
I mean CAC is one of the most efficiently run public institutions in Nigeria.
So once you have also been able to register your business, the next thing or next battle you are going to have to deal with is CREDIBILITY. This is something that I am going to have to deep dive into in the next episode, I mean just a little story to share. I have once received a purchase order from a client in the early days are one of my businesses and this purchase order was rescinded, just to tell you a purchase order is as good as money. Once you have gotten a purchase order in this credit economy that we live in Nigeria and globally you have more or less made a sale, made money, every other thing that follows are formalities.
However, it was surprising that, that purchase order was rescinded. I did not believe that such a thing was possible and what the competitor did was attack our credibility at the time. Some factors were involved and I am going to share more information about that in next episode, just look out for that and stay tuned.
Ultimately! Think BIG, start small.
Thanks for reading.