Well it is obvious everyone wants to become Rich. To be Rich, might well be the goal of everyone in the world. The quest for wealth is not biased along ethnic or racial demographic.
In my opinion, everyone does want to become RICH or albeit successful.
But the world over, we see that less than 30% (my opinion here, no facts to back that claim up) are actually rich. In Nigeria we can confidently say that its less than 10% of the population are wealthy. That is purely based on the assessment of assets owned and the bulkiness of an individual's bank account balance.
Of course, there is a lot perks that come along with being rich. We dream of it, in a dire attempt to satisfy our insatiable wants.
Imagine being rich enough to do this.
Amazing right! I know.
But the question we need to ask ourselves,
Why does everyone want to become rich and yet don't end up leaving the cold hands of poverty or end up in the perpetual middle class status throughout our lives, perhaps living from paycheck to paycheck.
How many of us want to be Successful?
In my opinion, the word 'success' in itself is highly distinctive, it inherently attaches itself to purpose.
It is majorly used as an adjective to assess the quality of someone's purpose or activity.
For Example,
"Aliko Dangote is a Successful Entrepreneur"
We assess this on the basis that he is a major employer of labour and his products are all over the market. His company produces cement, sugar, pasta amongst all other products.
The term 'success' lies in tandem with the purpose and the process. Some Entrepreneurs liken success to be a journey. An Entrepreneur becomes successful if he grows a small company into a big company. There are different metrics to assess the success of a business, which depends on the type of business. But the most important metric is the increasing number of customers (paying users).
AS YOU MIGHT HAVE NOTICED THIS IS NOT A PLOT TO LURE YOU INTO A PONZI SCHEME LIKE MMM.
STILL INTERESTED IN BEING RICH?
READ ON!
I have had the opportunity to read articles and books written by successful people from around the world and I have had the opportunity of networking with a few successful Nigerians. I have also taken huge time out to study successful people and wtheir recipes for success which has given me the opportunity to identify the x-factor that made them stand out from the rest.
I have summarized all I have learnt and organized them into the 5P's of Success and they are;
1. PURPOSE
2. PEOPLE
3. PRODUCT
4. PROCESS
5. PROFITS
I would pick each P and iterate on how important they are individually and in the latter parts of the article, I would take about how they all combine to create a successful and rich person.
PURPOSE
This for me is the most important P. Its the main P. Lol.
This is the major P for most Nigerians. LOOOL.
Okay enough play...
Purpose is the major factor. It defines the very essence of what you are trying to do, be it Entrepreneurship, Clergy, Public service. In whatever sector you find yourself in, your success is highly dependent on your purpose.
Mark Zuckerberg's purpose behind Facebook, was to connect people. He has done that very well. That is why everyone knows and acknowledges the fact that Facebook is the most successful social media platform.
Jason Njoku's purpose behind IrokoTV was to making Nigerian movies readily available anywhere in the world. That is why a lot of Nigerians at home and in the diaspora know IrokoTV is the go to website for good Nigerian movies.
Before you venture into anything. The first question you need to ask yourself is, "What is my purpose in life?
I am going to give you a boost here, If you live in Nigeria, better. If you don't its not over. There is a mentor of mine, Mr Peterson Adeniyi, people call him a 'guru'. He has been given, a gift from God. He is able to study people through personality and passion analysis, which gives him the ability to advise people and give them pointers as to how they can define their purpose in life.
Great! Yes. Give him a call . Here is a poster from one of his previous events, his contact details are on the flier.
It is important most especially when you are a budding Entrepreneur, you need to be able to have purpose in the company you are building because it defines the direction the company would move in and determines how that company would grow.
PEOPLE
To be successful, what you do has to have a positive impact on people in one way or the other. The success of a company is intrinsically tied to the customer's perception of your product or service.
People, or customers as we refer to them in business, are the most important metric in assessing growth.
Snapchat was not earning money for 3 years after their launch, because they spent time focusing on their purpose, of creating disappearing photos and videos. Their investors had realized how successful they were going to be because they had an increasing number of users.
Snapchat is currently valued at $24 billion dollars, I do not need to tell you that the founders are TOO RICH.
(In fact, na over rich dey worry them LOL.)
PRODUCT
This is an equally vital aspect of success.
It goes without saying.
Once you know what you want to do, and you know the people that have that need that you want to satisfy. You need to figure out what product or service you are going to build or offer to satisfy that need.
For example, HubbonNG , a Nigerian StartUp, has decided to attend to the needs of Small and Medium Enterprises to advert their business at cheaper rates and also reduce running costs by offering them affordable delivery services. And to solve that need they are building our web service to create a seamless process for that.
Your product needs to centered around delivering value to your customers. As far as you continue offering value to your customers, your customer base would keep increasing.
Your product is key!.
PROCESS
For most startups, they actually have defined all the first three components in a fairly straightforward process.
You can have your purpose carefully set out, your target market carefully identified and your product well built and set. But you must recognize that success is a process.
I earlier mentioned that Snapchat didn't monetize until 3 years of running their company. They were deeply in sync with the process of continuously iterating their product and improving their processes to provide value to their users, who are mostly millenials. They had investors that were not looking at ROI (Returns on Investments) so quickly head-on, but those that were more interested in the process. They had to always go through reshuffle in their teams which had the add team members and remove team members and while all these processes might seem a lot when you are going through them, they are evidently part and parcel of the journey. You need to keep focusing on your PURPOSE or the purpose of the business (its mission) to ensure that despite all the processes that are going on on the micro-level, you are able to ensure that the business would grow on the macro-level in line with that purpose.
That should be the goal!
PROFITS
Most people, and this is no way likened to only Africans, move first for profits. It is the major bane of why most people are not successful. If you are involved in a venture, just because you want profits right from the get-go...
Two things can happen,
Either you get too comfortable with the initial profits and you don't bother iterating your product and serving your customers, that you fall back into the obscurity from whence you came.
OR
You experience a lull period in business and because you were inspired to start the business in the first place because of the profit margins, you would immediately close up shop, declare bankruptcy and either take up a management role in a company, or go back into academia or become a good ol' unemployed citizen or if you went a long way in the business, you could become a serial investor and invest in other business with high expectations on ROI, and with hope you don't pressure those companies, if not your presence might inherently make them to fail as well.
It is important to note that, your company would begin to make money whenever your users value the product or service you are offering enough to pay for it. They pay at the price that they value your product or service to be offering them.
If you offer them a service or a product that attends to their needs extremely well, added to the fact that your service or product owns a high market share in your location, you can leverage on your influence in that market to charge higher fees to your users. Until you get your purpose,people,product and process right, profits cannot be assured.
FINAL NUGGET
Although the processes are relative based on a lot of factors. Factors like the target market, type of product, business location, digital penetration and access to funding amongst other factors determine how you run your business. One needs to understand that it is of utmost importance to consider the purpose and the people. What value are you offering to your the people. Everything else is secondary.
Once you stick to the rules of the 5P's OF SUCCESS I have just stated through your journey, It is only a matter of time till you are successful and rich. I wish you the best of luck on your journey.
Best Regards,
Muna
(HubbonNG)
For example, HubbonNG , a Nigerian StartUp, has decided to attend to the needs of Small and Medium Enterprises to advert their business at cheaper rates and also reduce running costs by offering them affordable delivery services. And to solve that need they are building our web service to create a seamless process for that.
Your product needs to centered around delivering value to your customers. As far as you continue offering value to your customers, your customer base would keep increasing.
Your product is key!.
PROCESS
For most startups, they actually have defined all the first three components in a fairly straightforward process.
You can have your purpose carefully set out, your target market carefully identified and your product well built and set. But you must recognize that success is a process.
I earlier mentioned that Snapchat didn't monetize until 3 years of running their company. They were deeply in sync with the process of continuously iterating their product and improving their processes to provide value to their users, who are mostly millenials. They had investors that were not looking at ROI (Returns on Investments) so quickly head-on, but those that were more interested in the process. They had to always go through reshuffle in their teams which had the add team members and remove team members and while all these processes might seem a lot when you are going through them, they are evidently part and parcel of the journey. You need to keep focusing on your PURPOSE or the purpose of the business (its mission) to ensure that despite all the processes that are going on on the micro-level, you are able to ensure that the business would grow on the macro-level in line with that purpose.
That should be the goal!
PROFITS
Most people, and this is no way likened to only Africans, move first for profits. It is the major bane of why most people are not successful. If you are involved in a venture, just because you want profits right from the get-go...
Two things can happen,
Either you get too comfortable with the initial profits and you don't bother iterating your product and serving your customers, that you fall back into the obscurity from whence you came.
OR
You experience a lull period in business and because you were inspired to start the business in the first place because of the profit margins, you would immediately close up shop, declare bankruptcy and either take up a management role in a company, or go back into academia or become a good ol' unemployed citizen or if you went a long way in the business, you could become a serial investor and invest in other business with high expectations on ROI, and with hope you don't pressure those companies, if not your presence might inherently make them to fail as well.
It is important to note that, your company would begin to make money whenever your users value the product or service you are offering enough to pay for it. They pay at the price that they value your product or service to be offering them.
If you offer them a service or a product that attends to their needs extremely well, added to the fact that your service or product owns a high market share in your location, you can leverage on your influence in that market to charge higher fees to your users. Until you get your purpose,people,product and process right, profits cannot be assured.
FINAL NUGGET
Although the processes are relative based on a lot of factors. Factors like the target market, type of product, business location, digital penetration and access to funding amongst other factors determine how you run your business. One needs to understand that it is of utmost importance to consider the purpose and the people. What value are you offering to your the people. Everything else is secondary.
Once you stick to the rules of the 5P's OF SUCCESS I have just stated through your journey, It is only a matter of time till you are successful and rich. I wish you the best of luck on your journey.
Best Regards,
Muna
(HubbonNG)
No comments:
Post a Comment