March 2012
will not listen to advice. Refusing to listen to advice has led peole to achieve feats that they were once told were impossible. They defied the odds. Now you have to have that doggedness in you as an entrepreneur. But the key is to know which advice not to listen to. Deciding which advice to take and which advice to discard could be very complex but it could lead to your success. But there are some basic things everybody would tell you. One of which is that financial management is key: You must simply record what you spend and what you earn. That is the simplest way. You don’t have to have any fancy accounting system. You set up on your laptop everyday what you spend and what you earn; log in your income and expenses. It would give you an idea of how practical your venture is. If you spent N400, 000 and only received N50, 000, which means you have a shortfall of N350, 000 and you know it. Your mind is already keyed into that fact. You don’t have to do anything fancy like cash flows or budget forecast or profit & loss. It is a simple record of what I spend and what I get in. At the end of the month, I look at my books and say: I don’t have enough money. That instils financial discipline from the start.” Truth be told; that is easier said than done. This is Lagos: we are always buying fuel. Our ‘miscellaneous expenses’ are higher than the fixed expenses. In fact the ‘fixed’ expenses stopped being fixed a long time ago. Besides, starting a business is like setting sail in the open sea. Konu agrees having been there himself and admits this: “Entrepreneurs by their very nature are adventurous and so it is a good idea to get someone more pedantic to handle your accounts. In large organisations they are called the account department; accountants but for a small business you would have to find somebody to do it for you. You should have someone to ginger you up, and demand for all 58
March 2012
“Why would you buy a car without testing it? The more information you have about the market and its players, the better your decision making would be. You must take cognisance of the competition. I always tell people one thing; ‘respect but not fear’. Respect the people that were there before you, but do not fear them.” your receipts; perhaps a friend, an associate or an assistant. You would have to instil financial management from the very beginning. Record what you spend and what you earn.” Continuous learning is giving great emphasis when we are on the job. Should that same emphasis come to play when we are on the PP(private practice) beat? Konu says yes: “When you are starting up, the first thing is the initial testing and research of the idea. Know your subject before you get into it. But you must continue. You cannot say you know it all and even if you did know it all in 2010, by 2012 things have changed. It is the same reason doctors get re-certified. It is without doubt very important.” So the fact that you did a three-month course in catering while you awaited your JAMB result 25 years ago does not mean you are ready to start a PP on small chops. Another three week brush-up course this month would not hurt and it would not absolve you of the need to do yet another three-day course towards the end of the year, just before the Christmas rush for caterers and confectionery.
Another question arises when we take a look at the competition; mostly people who are already doing the things we are thinking of doing. Is it being overly shrewd to snoop out the competition? We say ‘no’. You cannot know too much about the other players. You learn from their accolades as well as their mistakes. You learn about their strengths and challenges and their plans for the near and distant future. The more you know, the better equipped you are to make informed decisions. However, we do not recommend that you send a spy to steal their private documents; if you try that, you are on your own. Konu for his own part has this to say: “Why would you buy a car without testing it? The more information you have about the market and its players, the better your decision making would be. You must take cognisance of the competition. I always tell people one thing; ‘respect but not fear’. Respect the people that were there before you, but do not fear them.” In conclusion let’s get a little ‘dreamy’. We asked Konu that if wishes were horses what is the one thing (other than ‘NEPA’) that if the government made available would help budding entrepreneurs and he said: “Statistics.” You would probably have your own answer to that question, but Konu explains further saying: “If statistics were available, it would help in the decision making. Every time, a person has a business proposal he or she would have to conduct his or her own survey. I think the generation of statistics would help entrepreneurs a lot. The search for statistics is often defeatist. People often do not have the resources to conduct their own statistics. It is the government that would conduct surveys on how much power or fuel the country consumes in a day. That informs my decision on whether I want to open a petrol station or a supermarket. Statistics is what I have found to be a major challenge from my personal experience.” www.myfinancialintelligence.com