A Counterintuitive Approach To Visibility Studies For Entrepreneurs

I was checking out the live score of a football match I didn’t watch on Segun’s phone when an alert of #250,000 popped up on the screen. Being aware of the level of young people becoming fraudster’s, I called him and demanded an explanation. He reminded me of a time when he asked me for #150,000 for a course. He had asked everyone in the family at that point and successfully raised the money. Apparently, the money was used to pay mentor’s who were into a booming online business at the time – freelance writing.

Segun confidently opened his bank app and showed me how much he had made. From his explanation, he knew about freelance writing from a Church brother, Mr. Sam, who he knew worked online and was doing well financially. Segun had a knack for writing and knew he would crush it. The only problem was he had no idea how to go about it or what works. So he went online, created an account on the platform, started bidding for jobs but no one hired him. Frustrated, he approached Mr. Sam and explained his predicament.

Mr. Sam told him to pay #70,000 for his mentorship and Segun negotiated to #50,000. He then asked for #150,000 from us and paid Mr. Sam. After his time with Mr. Sam, he found 2 other mentors and paid them too. The second month after the training with the 3 mentors, Segun was making as much as #400,000 monthly. The #250,000 I saw on his phone was just two weeks pay.

Most people enter into business because they see someone who is financially well off doing it. So they think, “if it’s working for them, it will work for me.” Then they go and borrow loans to start the business only to watch the capital sink into oblivion. Then with our Nigerian mindset, they think their village people are after them.

When people get what they think is a business idea, they immediately start scrambling into getting funds. The ones savvy enough to do visibility studies take it a step further, do their market research, do their competition analysis, develop a business plan, and start looking for funding.

However, no matter how comprehensive our market research is, there are insider secrets that we won’t get until we start. These insider secrets sometimes are the glue the business or industry leans on. Interestingly, our market research won’t show us what they are; we think we’ve known all we need to until we are 10 feet deep into the business and we find ourselves scrambling to find answers to questions we never thought existed.

Don’t Start A Business Based On What You Think People Need

This is another thing people who are looking to go into business do. They come up with an idea about what THEY THINK will be profitable in an area, secure a little fund and sink it into the business.

When I lived in Magodo, I saw a man start a laundry business in my area. Most other areas in my neighbourhood had laundry businesses and were selling – we had none. So this man thought he would make a killing in ours too. To cut the long story short, he closed down after 2 months. Apparently, every home owner in my area had a laundry machine.

The Right Time To Seek Funding

Using Segun’s example above, the right time to seek funding for any business you plan to open up is when you see that the business works. It’s not enough to have an idea if you are looking for sustainability. For the laundry man’s case, he would have approached each houses in my area and asked if he could wash their clothes for a fee. If he did that, he would have had first hand insight into why there was no laundry shop in the area and saved himself the trouble.

To get first hand information about the sustainability of a business, you need to learn from someone in the industry – in other words, find a mentor. Being up close and personal with someone with a successful track record in the business will open you up to things you will never know from visibility studies alone.

Therefore, becoming an apprentice is a sure but counterintuitive way of learning about the variables or secrets you would not have known simply from doing visibility studies alone. You get first hand experience about the industry.

Don’t seek funds to see if a business will work or use “hope” as your strategy. You actually invite your village people to follow you when you do that.

#MMBA5