THE SOUL OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Hello, friends and entrepreneurs in the building, greetings to you all. In this post, I want to share my thoughts on what I call the soul of entrepreneurship. Having ventured into some businesses, some successfully and some unsuccessfully, I have gathered some experiences and I will like to share my views.

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To me, there many key things that make a successful entrepreneur. And I will discuss some of them below;

IDEAS

An entrepreneur is a man/woman of ideas. To set up any successful business, you must have an idea of the type of business you want to venture into. This idea comes with innovation. Sometimes, your business idea is what other people are doing already, but the question is what can I do differently from what others are already doing?

This innovative idea makes you unique and attracts and keeps customers to you. Some ideas too can be virgin ideas that no one else has thought of. Whether it is a virgin idea or a pre-existing idea, the most important thing is that your idea must be a solution to a problem. Any idea that solves a problem will succeed.

When people tell me that, oh I want to start up a business but I don't know what to invest in, what I usually tell them is, just look around your area and find out the problems in that area. Once you can reason out any solution to that problem, you will make a successful business there.

For instance, one of the most successful businesses I had in school as an undergraduate years back was a football viewing center. Then, I stayed on a campus made up of 6 hostels and they were all male hostels. I noticed that every weekend and most evenings, students went out of the campus gate to watch their football matches. Most times they returned very late when the hostel gate was already locked. It was a problem for them.

I noticed this problem and thought of a solution to it. I approached the hall supervisor of one of the hostels and pleaded with him to make use of the common room to show football matches. After much pleading, he agreed and I had a deal with him. I sourced a DSTV decoder and one television then. That was how I started the match viewing center and it was a great news for the guys as they didn't have to go outside the campus to watch matches again.

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Even though I didn't start with a big plasma TV, the business grew successfully and within one academic session, I already had two bigger TVs and a lot of savings. So my first secret to successful entrepreneurship is to discover a problem and provide a solution to it.

MOTIVATION AND DETERMINATION

Another key factor in entrepreneurship is motivation. I want to state categorically here that it is not easy. The story of my viewing center above sounds very easy but the truth is that in-between every success story are moments of challenges and tough times, but only a strong motivation and your determination that will see you through in those difficult times.

For instance, after I had sealed the deal with the hall supervisor to use the common room for the business, after some weeks, the Dean of Student Affairs who was a higher authority frowned at the decision to use the common room for that purpose. It took a lot of letter writing and pleading before I secured the approval. It was a challenging moment but I never gave up.

Another big challenge I faced was the day my new generator got spoilt. After I made some money from the viewing center, I decided to diversify my business by purchasing a photocopier and generator set since most of the students do photocopy materials and past questions. I successfully bought them, but the very first day I started that business, immediately I connected the photocopy machine to the power source from the generator, and the coil got burnt.

According to them, the power of the machine was higher than the power of the generator. And I already spent all my savings from the viewing center on this new business. I almost gave up but I remembered my motto, Never give up. I had to borrow money to add to the little I had to make arrangements for a bigger generator. In the end, this business was also successful. Though in-between the success story, a lot of 'shege' were seen 😅. But with determination, it was a huge success.

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So to be a successful entrepreneur, you must be fully determined and motivated to achieve your goals. You must not be deterred by challenges because challenges will surely come. But with determination, you will conquer your challenges and succeed.

HAVE A FORESIGHT

The third principle of entrepreneurship that I am going to share today is foresight. The world is changing and you must be smart and calculative. The business that is in vogue today will be outdated tomorrow. The services that are sought after today may be out of fashion tomorrow. People are constantly evolving new and better ways of doing things. To succeed, you must flow with this trend and never allow the ship to leave you behind.

I will buttress this point with my 3rd and last business in school which was not successful. The business later failed because I didn't have the foresight and didn't flow with the trend.

After I gathered some money from my viewing center and photocopy business, I thought of another very lucrative business in school and then decided to go into the transport business. I bought a fairly used 18-seater bus and registered it to run as a campus shuttle.

The business started well but along the line, people started seeing that 18-seater buses waste time to get filled up because you need 18 passengers to fill the bus to set for the trip. Most times, students are rushing for lectures and didn't have the time and patience to wait till 18 passengers arrive.

The shuttle owners who thought ahead started thinking of better ways to solve the problem. Some switched to 14-seater buses which was fair but still, but 14 passengers are still much. The time evolved very fast and someone one day arrived at the park with 3 minibusses that carry only 7 passengers each. This new idea was a game changer for the students and a spoiler for some 18-seater bus owners like myself. The students embraced these new buses as they were faster and more efficient. Before you know it, many people started switching to minibusses.

Those of us who still held on to our 18-seater buses because they carried more people and therefore more money started losing passengers. At one point, students couldn't even enter the big buses at all. They rather wait for the minibusses than enter the big 18-seater buses. Gradually the big buses lost value and even when I wanted to sell mine to switch to the minibus, nobody could price it anything because the bus had no value anymore. The entire park was already taken over by minibuses.

At one point, I just had to park the bus. The mini-bus gradually became very expensive that I couldn't afford to buy it then. So I just had to leave the transport sector and focus on the viewing center and photocopy business till I graduted and left the school.

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So as an entrepreneur, you have to have the foresight to know the future and be ahead of the game at all times.

A lot has been learned but for the sake of time, I will stop here for today.

Thanks for reading and do have a successful entrepreneurial day.
Cheers!