Editor’s note: Bakare Moshood Oladejo, the ZENITHBLOG.com partner blogger, in this article reveals how aspiring business owners in Nigeria could scale through the hurdles of becoming successful entrepreneurs. He also explains why many advocates of self-employment could not tell people what they really need to scale the hurdles.
Bakare, a writer, blogger and trainee computer programmer, has Bachelor degree in Educational Technology from the University of Ilorin.
He could be contacted via: http://ift.tt/2kmV0HJ or moshbakare@outlook.com
More details in ZENITHBLOG.com’s step-by-step guide for guest bloggers.
With the way National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) officials, university lecturers and of late, secondary school teachers scream self-employment nowadays, you would be left wondering why you went to school in the first place. But if there are no more jobs as they say, is self-employment the solution?
The self-employment advocates coaching prospective business owners
Self-employment comes with a host of problems that only those who have veered into it successfully or unsuccessfully can understand. There is always the problem of financing and depending on how big or complicated the business, production, buying, staffing, logistics, quality control, market suitability, advertisement, location, warehousing, costumer relations, selling and most importantly, risk is.
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NYSC, schools and painfully, entrepreneurs, self-employed persons, resource persons and every other person in between, lay too much emphasis on the production aspect while they deliberately or ignorantly leave out the other aspects, most especially that of risks and selling.
The risk and selling aspects mark the difference between a successful, a not-so-successful and a failed business. Selling is as important; if not more important than production or what is the essence of producing without selling? You could have just flushed your money down the toilet and spent your time watching a dog chase its tail.
The risk aspect is in a class of its own. It could mean the difference between the life and death of a business and its owner.
I have gone into the self-employment/entrepreneurship niche twice and I still plan to go into it again. But first, I’ll like to share my experience with Nigerians.
In early 2014, I went into the importation business. It was my first time and I decided to go into an untapped niche, which was a risk. I was also buying the product through the internet, from people I have not and would probably never meet in my life. That’s a big risk, which becomes much bigger when you realize I am buying from faraway China and shipping it through some Nigerian middlemen.
I imported a teeth whitening kit. I bought twenty pieces (for testing purposes) but the product did not work as specified, so I never sold it. I kept it at home and I currently use that strange-looking contraption with the white light label as a flashlight. About 30,000 naira went down the drain. Not many people can afford to forfeit such amount. But I did! And mind you, I was in my third year in the University.
I returned again towards the end of 2014 and this time, it was power banks. I bought 19 pieces in four different capacities for testing. The smallest capacity of which I had the most units did not work as expected and the biggest spoiled easily. So, I pulled the smallest out of the market and kept the biggest for personal use. Then, I proceeded to sell the rest.
I printed a black and white advertisement, bought some starch and safety pins, sacrificed my safety and sleep and started pinning my adverts on notice boards inside the school at night and on walls around the school in the early mornings. I remember some ferocious looking dogs chased me one morning, barking and grunting like the scumbags they were.
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The business was very profitable and I made my capital back in the first day of sales. I cannot remember how much I invested in it but I know it was either a little below or above 30,000 naira. This was just a test run and I was supposed to import more. I never did and went on to spend my capital and profits for reasons I did not understand. This was my fourth year in the University.
All said, I just wanted us, most especially the self-employment advocates, whom I realised are rarely self-employed to know that self-employment and entrepreneurship is not for everybody. The truth is that most self-employed persons and entrepreneurs would fail and many more would never make any tangible income. More of the successful few would also never rise above a profit ceiling. Only a handful will ever make it.
So, when next someone screams self-employment into your ears and tells you motivational stories of success, don’t get carried away. Self-employment is much more complicated than they tell you. The problems involved are so big; one needs serious determination to go through.
READ ALSO: How to fight unemployment rate and become entrepreneur In Nigeria
However, you should not totally ignore the self-employment advocates because some of what they teach can make you some money by the side.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial policy of ZENITHBLOG.com.
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