You Have the P.O.W.E.R. to Start a Business While Working Your Day Job

You Have the P.O.W.E.R. to Start a Business While Working Your Day Job

ISRAEL IDONIJE
Founder and CEO of ATHLiTACOMiCS

I believe anyone can accomplish great things. Regardless of who you are or where you’re from, if you have an idea, you can make it happen. This approach to life has helped me to achieve goals and accomplishments far beyond the NFL, including starting my own business while still playing football. I used my power approach, not the same power I might have used on the field, but a simple five-step mantra to help anyone start a business.

1. Plan.
I knew it was important to transition to self-employment before my career in the NFL ended. I started my venture as an entrepreneur while playing for the Chicago Bears. The number one key to that transition is having a strong, flexible plan. Launching a new endeavor while still employed full time allows you to take your time and test the waters to gauge its potential for success. And most importantly adjust for the next play.

2. Originate.
Being original and innovative is a key aspect of anything I do. I combined in a unique way two worlds that I enjoy immensely, sports and comics. Athlitacomics’ mission is to inspire, unite and entertain the world with dazzling art and stories. When figuring out where to start, the first place to look is at your passions and what problems might need solving in that platform. Be willing to reverse assumptions, study your industry’s history or look outside what you know.

3. Willingness.
Turning ideas into reality takes serious work! My spare time was spent working on bringing my business plan to life and persisting even when I was turned down. There was a lot of sacrifices involved to get to where I am today. An abundance of great ideas are out there, but it’s the action that is often lacking. You need to be willing to put in the work and face criticism.

4. Evolve.
At one point with my Sports Heroes property, I had to shift gears to get to the real opportunity. Be prepared to change course, tweak or transform as needed to position your idea for the best possible launch. Keep in mind that many of the most successful companies exist in a form that is completely different from how they were first imagined.

5. Resources.
Put together the best possible team and/or gather the needed essentials before you start operating. Create a list of what you’ll need and its associated cost. Some requirements on my list included branding, an online presence and communications. No matter the size of your business, you’ll need a few essentials to get up and running and to demonstrate professionalism to your target audience.

You don’t need to quit your day job right now to start your own business. You just need the right plan, some original thinking, the willingness to do it, the ability to evolve and the right resources. That is the power behind my business.

Source : The Entrepreneur

The Man I Married: by Asibor Hilary Osoria.

The Man I Married; by Asibor Hilary Osoria.

My name is Shaw, I am 54 years old. This is my True Life Story.

I met this guy sometime in May 2007 through my late husband. This man happened to be my husband’s closest friend and confidant who became part of my family as a result of the closeness. We were very close and I got to know him as a very humble man. During my mourning period he was very supportive and was always available for my family. Even when my husband’s family tried to rubbish me and keep me in the dark, not wanting me to know the next plan of action, he, my late husband’s friend was always by me.

After the mourning period, as expected, I was frustrated and confused. I prayed and cried. My husband with all the plans he had for us his family, died so prematurely though he was ill for long. A lot of people suggested that Joe, my husband’s closest friend should marry me, even though my husband’s family strongly kicked against the idea on the ground that their late brother kept a lot of wealth for us and they are in the best position to decide who marries me and consequently controls our family business.

The battle was tough but eventually the elders of both families (my husband’s and mine) sat down and decided that I should be given the opportunity to make a choice. They also suggested to me as a way of recommendation that Joe is the best for me, being that he has worked with my husband diligently and understood my husband’s plan for my family.

I decided to hear from him, to see if he could really convince me beyond reasonable doubt that he will be a great husband. We met several times and I got to know a lot about him. He happens to come from a humble background. He is a caring person and fun to be with.

Eventually we got married in May 2010.

He had earlier on played the role of a father to my kids while my husband was very ill and I was impressed.

Along the line, I started seeing some personal traits that was not obvious in the beginning. For instance, he does not respond to family issues on time. When I have issues with neighbours, even when they beat our kids outside, he will never bulge. I complained of this attitude severally but he always ignored me. Many times, my kids were sent away from school because of school fees and other times because of very poor performance in exams.

Now it has been four years since we got married. I have checked our general condition as a family and I came to realise that we have not made much progress after all. Our family wealth has been distributed amongst those who stood by my present husband during the death of my late husband. They have virtually left nothing for my children and me. My kids fall sick regularly and never have access to good medical care. My first son failed WAEC and my findings showed that it was because we could not afford good lesson teacher for him, unlike our neighbour’s son who had 7As and 3Bs in same exams.

With all these in my mind, I have become very cold towards him. He has refused to change but he never fails to say sorry for not doing the right things even when everything is under is command. I am sick and tired of complaining without any changes.

Lest I forget, there is this man who has always asked for my hand in marriage, even before I met my late husband. But I have remained sceptical about him. Something tells me that he will be a bully and will turn our relationship to that of a good master and servant. I feel this way about him because he was my late sister’s husband. Though, my sister and her family were always protected by him from neighbours and intruders. He never failed to flog any child that misbehaved even when his wife begged for mercy on the child’s behalf.

He always paid his children’s school fees and he always made sure that everybody had access to medical care. Nobody complained of lack but you will be thought a lesson if you wasted a grain of rice.

My sister’s problem with him was that he never allowed her to buy expensive jewelleries. She was not allowed to spend her holidays in expensive cities around the world even when they could afford it, and was always interested in how she spends the family money. My sister never liked it.

But I noticed that my sister was always happy and had a very high self-esteem. She never complained of neglect, not even for once. She never complained that her husband was seeing someone else. She said her husband always let her know before spending money from their family purse. At a point we felt her husband was over working himself for his family.

In 2009 while my late husband was still alive, some miscreants came threatening my family and requesting that we should start living our life in a certain way. They were so serious with the threat to the extent that one of my late husband’s security men was killed. This did not go down well with my late husband so he ordered for the arrest of the gang leader. But during his arrest, he was killed by friends and colleagues of my husband’s security man who was earlier killed by the gang. The death of this gang leader brought a sudden stop to the threat and misbehaviour of those miscreants.

Disaster struck!

Few years down the line, after the death of my late husband, the group came back with an unprecedented force with the aim of putting my family on bended knees. They killed many of my present husband’s security men. They destroyed our properties and caused great fear in my family. At this point, we were unable to go on with our daily activities without fear. Our finance started to nose-dive.

Now, instead of my husband to seat down and plan on how to tackle these guys, he will rather start trading blames. He blames his problem on anybody that criticises his miscalculated decisions.

Today, most of our business partners have stopped doing business with us. Some say our environment is no longer secure, while others accuse my husband of corruption and lack of management skill.

Moment of decision,

In our culture, a woman is expected to review her marriage every four years and decide whether to continue or marry someone else. This happens to be the year and I am deeply worried, not knowing what to do. Should I give my husband another four years or marry my late sister’s husband?

Please advise.

This Writer is a Nigerian based in Nigeria, he can be reached via chlimited247gmail. chlimited247@gmail.com 

THE MAN YOU MUST NEVER MEET!

THE MAN YOU MUST NEVER MEET!

I heard this story from a preacher several years ago and the lesson it teaches is as relevant today as it was then.

There was once an accomplished, globally renowned organist. His skills on the various forms of pipe and electric organs were unrivalled. He was a much sought-after performer at government and inter-governmental functions all over the world. And as his fame and accolade grew, so did his bank account.

But in a very quiet recess of his heart there was something that was yearning for more. For more diligence in reaching deeper to become even better at what he did. And for more effort in discovering why he had been so extraordinarily blessed by the gift he had. But his busy schedule and growing demand for his services did not give him too much time to reflect on the quiet yearning of his heart. Just around this period, he was declared the ‘Man of the Year’ by the global TIME magazine – he had reached the zenith of accomplishment.

He died shortly afterwards and found himself in an unending tunnel of light. As he walked along, he heard a melodious music coming from somewhere down the tunnel. He quickened his pace toward the source of the music, for he was enthralled by the quality of the music he was hearing. “Yeah, that’s the level of music I would have loved to play on earth; that was what my mind kept nudging me towards.” He said to himself as he got to a bend and saw the man playing the music in the distance.

Half running now, he got to the man, stood behind him and listened intently to the music he would have loved to play on earth. Summoning up courage, he tapped the shoulder of the man playing the organ, and got the shock of his life! For as the man looked up, our friend saw that the man that had been playing the organ is himself! As the two men stared at each other, an angel appeared and cleared up the confusion.

He turned to the man that had just arrived and said, “The man you saw playing the organ is the prototype of who God created you to be. And the music you heard him playing is the music that God created you to play. God wanted to be worshipped on earth with that level of quality of music, and He created you specifically to fill that purpose. But you got to the world, and allowed the adulation and reward of men to distract you from becoming who you were created to be. Here is the man you should have been, but you fell short of the standard and purpose for your creation.”

LESSON: The man you must NEVER meet - is the man you were created to be. Who were you created to be? What exactly did God have in mind when he formed you? Are you fulfilling that purpose today? Do you even know the purpose? Have you been distracted by the adulation of man? Have you allowed the pursuit of wealth to take you off course? Are you constantly going back to God to get your bearing that you are on course? If you died tonight (God forbid) would you be the man you were meant to be, or would you meet the man you were meant to be? Please reflect deeply while you still have the opportunity to do so.

“So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” (Matthew 25:28-29)

Friends, this is indeed how to get ready for the second coming of Jesus Christ. God bless.

Anonymous

Why Smart People Make Bad Entrepreneurs

One of the most counterintuitive traits that can hurt entrepreneurs is smarts.

Yes, the more successful you are and the more talents you have, the harder it is to run a business.

While you may think that being smart, motivated, and talented would logically make someone the best possible candidate for entrepreneurship, unfortunately, this is often not the case.

The "I'm better than everyone at every task" challenge

The smart-people problem starts back in school when the dreaded "group projects" are first assigned. Knowing the 80/20 rule for work (80% of all work is done by 20% of the people), what do you think happens in every group project? The smartest and most talented people in each group decide that they are going to do the lion's share of the work.

They don't want to risk their grade in the class by dividing the work equally and hoping that Timmy (the guy who is absent from class two days a week on average and sleeps through class on the other three days) does his part well, if he remembers to do it at all. In school, there isn't any benefit in trying to get Timmy up to speed quickly. Forget that — the smart people just take over and do the whole project themselves.

And thus begins the smart-people work cycle. The smartest people do just about everything better than most everyone else. They write better, plan better, and reason better. They are better, until it comes to running a business. Then, they are not better; they are screwed.

There are only 24 hours in each day and a person does need to sleep, eat, shower, and do certain other things. So, each day, this smart person tries to do everything himself, because he can't stand someone else doing a job badly. Then, he is stuck with the one-man band "job-business" and ends up not being able to grow.

Why slackers can reign supreme as entrepreneurs

It is interesting, but actually, some of the slackers are better suited for entrepreneurship than the "smart" people. Why? They figured out early on to surround themselves with smart people who would do the work. They know how to delegate and, sometimes, how to manipulate other people into doing things that they don't want to do.

You're only as smart as you can automate

Ideally, smart people would just be able to convey their talents to others. But since the smart people are so used to doing everything themselves, they don't learn the key skills for making their business successful, including automating and delegating as many tasks as possible. As a smart person, you need to use your smarts and talents to boil down their essence in an easy-to-follow format that anyone can replicate.

Too smart for your own good

Smart and talented people also often have a flair for the unusual, complicated, or different. They don't like to follow the KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid), which is required to make a business succeed.

If you think of the assembly line in a fantastic manufacturing plant or the global presence of McDonald's, they both seem complex, but in reality, they are a series of incredibly simple functions. Every single task is broken down into easy-to-follow steps. The assembly line worker repeatedly performs a few tasks that are specifically defined. So does the McDonald's cook, cashier, and drive-thru order taker. There is little input from these individuals, as everything has been standardized for them.

Some of the largest, most successful businesses in the world aren't staffed in their majority by the smartest people. They are actually staffed in large part by regular, average (and sometimes stupid) people. These successful entities have just a few people who are smart enough to standardize, automate, and delegate the majority of the tasks in a way that can't be screwed up by their average employees.

So, being smart or talented isn't going to help you unless you can use those smarts to figure out a way to simplify those tasks that will make a business successful. This isn't easy, because it goes against everything that you have ever done and is counter to how you were taught to think. However, it is necessary for a business to succeed and why smarts and talent alone don't predict entrepreneurial success.

Too much to lose

Another issue with the smart people starting businesses is that they often have the most to lose. The smarter you are — unless you have the social graces of a wild ape — the more options you have available to you. You will be able to make a lot of money in a variety of fields and have room in your career to become promoted and make even more money.

This means that when you start a business, you have a lot more to risk than someone who makes less money and has fewer career options. This is often referred to as the "golden handcuffs" dilemma. Because you have more to risk, this means that you need to have a business opportunity that is going to provide an even bigger reward for it to be worth it to you.

If you make $250,000 a year (or have an opportunity to do so), your business is going to have to be five times more successful than the business of someone making $50,000 a year to get the same return. Additionally, it is a lot harder to found a business that will double your yearly profit when you make $250,000 a year than it would be if you make $50,000 a year.

So, with the most to lose, a wide range of other options available, and the penchant for more intricate, complex endeavors, don't be surprised when the person "Most Likely to Succeed" from high school ends up in corporate America and one of the more average students finds success in his or her own business.

Source: The Entrepreneur

Being Business Minded (Part 5). ..

Being Business Minded (Part 5). .. "Witty inventions".

Proverbs 8:12
I wisdom dwell with prudence,
and find out knowledge of witty inventions.

Chido is one of my Facebook fans, she reads every post, and follows up with my "After thoughts", taking copious notes, and extracting principles.
One day she decided to visit her grandmother, who lived in a village about 400km from the capital city of her country, She would have to travel there by bus, or "catch a lift", from someone going to the area. The challenge for her was that the bus could be very intermittent, and never really followed a particular schedule, and as for the "guys with lifts", she was afraid, she might get someone who could harm her.
Anyway she would have to brave it, because that is the way it had always been. Only this time, as she sat in a rickety rural bus, she was thinking about something I had said in one of my posts:
She was thinking about Uber. In her own research she had discovered that the guy who set up Uber, set it up because he could not get a taxi, when he needed it:
"Why can't we "Uber-ize" rural transport?" she asked herself?:
"Imagine, if I could get an SMS 30 minutes before the bus was getting close to my village, instead of waiting all day?"
She had also read on the Internet, about the "Uber car pool system", and she thought to herself, "if the guys who offer others a lift, were on an "Uber-like" system, I would have a better chance of vetting who gives me a lift, and when they are available."
"Why doesn't some African entrepreneur come up with a system, similar to Uber to solve our own transport problems? ... Surely, it must be possible to adapt the software they use for our challenges, here in Africa?"
Returning from the visiting her grandmother, Chido had to wait almost the whole day, by the side of the road, trying to get a lift back to town. As usual it was a harrowing experience for the young woman. Finally, she managed to squeeze herself into the back of a truck driven by a drunkard, who almost killed them.
The following day she called a young friend, whom she often met at the Internet cafe, and she asked him a question:
"James, you know how to write in code, don't you?"
"I have Internet friends all over Africa, and even as far as India, who could help us develop something like this. Its actually not that difficult." James declared, confidently.
The two of them reached out to some Internet friends, using Social Media, and began to develop their idea. Very soon they had a company, with partners in Nigeria, Kenya, India and America.
....when their company listed on the New York Stock Exchange, a few years later, they were richer than Aliko Dangote!

Principle:
Chido and James do not have to be imaginary characters. There are young people across the entire world who have skills to solve this kind of problem, and many others like them. They do not need to buy buses to get into business, but they will end up making more money than any bus operator in history. They will be able to get into business with far less capital, than I needed.

Be "business conscious"; "be business minded"..... This is your dispensation!

To be continued…

Strive Masiyiwa

Being Business Minded (Part 4):

Being Business Minded (Part 4): Uber....EcoCash or M-PESA, are just the same!

One of my young daughters, intrigued by what I said in my first post on being business-minded asked me, "so how does a Mobile Money service, like EcoCash or M-PESA, actually work?"
"It works just like Uber?" I replied.
"How?", she asked surprised.
"Like Uber, they use a very sophisticated software platform, to link up key partners in the transaction process.
.... Uber relies on independent drivers, who own the cars, and actually carry the people. Our mobile money service, Ecocash relies on thousands of independent small businesses, who handle the actual transactions.
If you think about it, the principles used in these two systems, are exactly the same:
Uber works, as a unique partnership, with the drivers...
Mobile Money transfer systems, works as a unique partnership with thousands of small businesses."
She stopped and reflected for a moment, then asked:
"Do you think there are other partnerships, out there, that can use, this "Uber/Ecocash" type principle?"
"The opportunities, are actually limitless.... You just have to be business-minded, to find them. Why don't you think of other services which could be developed using the same principle?"

Being business-minded, is not just about creating new products or services, but sometimes, it is about bringing "disruptive" new ideas, to existing products and services.

......And if you come up with a great idea, be smart: don't go telling the whole world on Facebook, just do it!"

In my next post, I will tell you a remarkable story about a smart young lady, called Chido.. Who listened to me!

To be continued…

Strive Masiyiwa

Being Business Minded (Part 3)

Being Business Minded (Part 3)... Change is coming to your Business!

In the last post, I made a comment, about what I called a "changing dispensation", and many of you were quite intrigued by this, and asked me to explain:
Whenever I share a little story, my key objective is to help you extract one or two principles that you can apply, when you find yourself in such a situation:
For instance, I gave the story of Blackberry:
Until they came along, our business model, as a Mobile Network Operator, was to buy phones in bulk, as cheaply as possible, and sell them to our customers. Our business was not to sell phones, but to get people to use them; our business was "airtime". Now here was a new manufacturer (Blackberry) who did not want to just sell us phones, but wanted a share of the airtime revenue...actually they wanted the majority of the airtime revenue!

I realised very quickly that they were not selling a phone, but a service. Blackberry is not a phone, it is a phone used to access the Internet. It was the first real "smartphone":
The game had changed!!....new dispensation!
Companies like Nokia, and Motorola, who had dominated the game, until then were in big, big trouble, if they did not see this "change in dispensation":
Nokia, failed to see this change, and were taken to the cleaners. Giant companies like Ericsson's of Sweden , Siemens of Germany, shut down their cell phone manufacturing businesses, and fled at the coming of the "smartphone", boys like Samsung and Apple! Others just became small time players in an industry they had once dominated.

"Changing dispensation."

I also realised at that point that we would have to change quickly and turn our attention to things like Mobile Money services. Now we would have to hire bankers, and insurance people, even doctors (yes we have medical doctors developing products).
This was at a time when there was no Google, Twitter, Skype, Facebook, Alibaba, or WhatsApp. We would have to reach out to these new players, and find ways to work with them, or get rolled over!

Extract a principle now:
It does not matter what industry you are in, or how well established it looks. Somewhere, somewhere, there is someone working on something, that will completely turn it upside down!
Uber is changing the public transport industry of taxis. Amazon took on the distribution of books. Netflix and similar services, will smash the traditional TV broadcasters, and Pay TV companies...

Being business minded, is accepting this reality. It is something that should actually "excite" you. I get goose pimples...I love it!

Another principle:
In 1900, if a young man or woman, went to the most successful person around and said, "what business should I be in, to really be successful?", the answer would not be the same, when asked in 2000. And it would not be the same, if asked in 2050. These are different dispensations:
You should not be dreaming of being a rural bus operator! ... It is not a business of your dispensation.

There are new industries, being developed every day, at an ever increasing pace.

To be continued…

Strive Masiyiwa