Dear Business Owner/ Future Business Owner,

I welcome you to this thread, “FREE TUTORIAL: How To Start And Grow A Profitable Business (Online or Offline).” I created a similar thread sometime ago, but couldn’t continue due to some circumstances beyond my control. God’s willing, I’ll make it up to you this time.

Note: This is not your regular business thread where the OP comes here to introduce you to business concepts he has never practiced. I am a “talk na do” kind of person. I practice what I preach. I have tested all the business concepts I’ll be sharing with you here and I know they work. It doesn’t matter if you run an online business or a brick and mortar business, fundamental business principles are the same. If you apply them and they do not give you the desired results, then it’s either you’re missing something or you are not abreast with your business environment.

As you already know, a business does not operate in a vacuum, but in an environment. The environment in which a business operates can affect it, negatively or positively. A business can also influence its environment, depending on its size and the role it plays.

Stay tuned to this thread as I hold you by the hand and guide you through the process of starting and running your own business.

To be continued shortly.

If You are a regular visitor to any business forum, You should be familiar with threads like, "I have N1,000,000. What kind of business can I do?” Or “I need urgent advice on where to invest N700,000" which is usually followed by various suggestions from people who have never owned or managed a business, not even for a day. Original posters of such threads and other followers ignorantly invest their hard earned money (in some instances, bank loans with outrageous interest rates) into these ideas without adequate preparation. No feasibility study, no business plan, no guide, no mentorship, no survival strategy, no marketing plan, no contingency plan, Nothing. What baffles me most is that some of them are not even patient enough to learn the ropes of the trade. They just go ahead and pour in all their money, Wham! And they start regretting. I'm not surprised they end-up that way. Winston Churchill was not drunk when he said that, “He who fails to plan is planning to fail.” What on earth were they thinking?

After going through this FREE Course, your question will change from “What business can I start with Nxxxx?” to “There is this need in my town/ state/ country. How can I turn this opportunity into a profitable business?”. The later is the kind of question an entrepreneur asks.

(Pls stay tuned - I will continue soon).

I'm with you sir ride on

Ride on bro
Biro n jotter communicating

Great post.

For avoidance of doubt, let me state again that I'm an entrepreneur to the core. I'm an accounting graduate and an MBA student, but I'm not one of those who believe University education only prepares one for paid employment. I took an entrepreneurship course at the university, and since then, I've developed what I refer to as the most important trait of an entrepreneur - the love for risks. On this thread, I won't just be talking about the theoretical part of entrepreneurship, but practical, real-life cases, drawing inferences from my personal experience (both failures and successes). Some people think entrepreneurs don't fail. That's a big lie. Do a little research on all the big names we know as entrepreneurs, the likes of Bill Gates, and you'll be surprised to learn that they've had more failures than successes. Like I always tell people, entrepreneurship is a game just like football, basket ball, tennis etc. Sometimes, you win, other times, you lose. The ability to rise after falling is what makes you a real entrepreneur - Entrepreneurs don't succumb to failure.

When you decide to run your own business, there are only two approaches available to you. The entrepreneur approach or the businessman approach. Your success or failure to a large extent depends on the approach you adopt.

So why did I create this thread? I created this thread because I care. Because I want you to succeed too. Here, I’ll teach you how to start and grow a profitable and successful business or reinvigorate an existing one. A business that earns you real money, but that also allows you to enjoy the lifestyle you want. I’m optimistic that this thread will help you become more successful.

Here’s an outline of what you will learn on this thread:

1. How to identify business opportunities

2. How to conduct a feasibility study to determine the viability of an idea (No. 2 is very important. Don’t get me wrong. Other topics are equally important too, but this is where you’ll acquire the skills to ascertain whether or not an idea is worth investing in, before parting with your money). 95% of businesses failed as a result of poor feasibility study or lack of it.

3. How to prepare a simple business plan

4. How to prepare a simple but powerful marketing plan

5. How to launch a successful business

6. How to choose the best location for your business (Retail businesses specifically, if you get the location wrong, there’s absolutely no way out – You are destined for failure).

7. How to develop and implement the most effective advertising strategies

8. Customer service and how it affects your new business start-up

9. How to differentiate your business from the competition

10. Recruiting and selecting the best employees

11. How to manage changes in the business environment

12. Sources of funding (This is another very important topic. Here I’m going to teach you how to get free grants from the federal government to finance your business. Some of us are not aware that there is special funds set aside by the federal government of Nigeria for this purpose. I’ll also teach you how to secure grants from the African Development Bank and how to secure business loans without collateral).

13. Building a successful business

14. Major causes of business failure and how to avoid them

Stay tuned for the first topic – How to identify business opportunities

Modified

All by big eyes on this thread!
Thanks first of all for starting this.
God bless

also check this one how the gurus makes massive wealth online and offline if interested visit www.webguruschoolmodel.com/partners
www.webguruschoolmodel.com/partners/joinnow.php (628154) to register. see you there

Pls I need to know more abt snail farming , I started abt 6 months ago the are not growing and they are dying, pls what can I do to improve productivity, thanks.

following

Following...

FREE BUSINESS AND EMPOWERMENT SEMINAR
Entrepreneurship is the major key to economic development; it is the only means of improving the standard of living of every individual.
The only practicable means of poverty alleviation is making people to be independent, making people to be a better entrepreneur.
The major challenge faced by Nigerians, most especially the civil servants is the challenge of life after service
List of BUSINESS you can start with #50,000 naira or less and make decent returns on investment on weekly and monthly basis.
The Highlights of our business and empowerment programs are as follows-

1 Five hot businesses you can start with less than #50,000
2 Five hot businesses you can start with less than #300,000
3 How to be a distributor of these products
A Honeywell, semolina etc
B Plastic products
C Dangote cement
4 How to set a supermarket with #300,000
5 How to make over 100% profit weekly supply a particular to the various end users
Bonuses
1 How to make Ankara bags, ladies and women’s pulse
2 How to make Ankara accessories
3 Introduction to make up artist
4 How to get COLLATERAL FREE LOAN between #100,000-#500,000 within 72hours
5 How to sell your Ankara bags, pulse, beads and other items on JUMIA, OLX, KONGA etc
Seminar date: Saturday, 21/03/2015
Venue: 1/3 Choice Plaza Ire Akari Estate Isolo, Lagos
Time: 10am ( no African time )
Registration fees: Two thousand naira (#2000) only
its first come first serve, all you need to reserve your seat is to text your name, location, email address and telephone number to 08033702558 with the title EMPOWERMENT SEMINAR

INABILITY to THINK is the GREATEST PROBLEM of MAN, if you can THINK enough you will have more than ENOUGH.
The secret of RICHES is SELLING. If you want to be rich and financially free, you must sell something. there is NO FREE MONEY any where, even in FREE TOWN nothing is FREE. Stop dreaming wake up to REALITY, in fact DREAMS are FREE but ACTUALIZATION comes with a PRICE TAG, Dangote sells something, Otedola sells something, Bill gate sells something, check the archives the world’s wealthiest people, they all SELL something. START NOW ,START from you are, SEE you at the TOP

Reserve your SEAT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
For enquiries call
Sam 08033702558

Business tool where at thou

I just returned from exile. I'll continue with the tutorial soon. Thanks for your patience.

How to identify business opportunities

The reason most people fail in business is that they create a product and start looking for a market. An entrepreneur does not do that. Instead, he searches his environment for problems. Then, he proceeds to creating a product (good or service) capable of solving the identified problem. In that case, he doesn’t have to struggle to sell his products. All that he needs to do thereafter is to introduce the product to the market (people or businesses experiencing the problem) by advertising, and they will be more than willing exchange the solution for money. If you try to do the opposite, i.e creating a product before looking for a market for it, your business is destined for doom.

Business opportunities are everywhere but are usually in disguise, So you can only notice them when you pay close attention to the world around you and the people living in it. Today’s lecture will help you understand what business opportunities are and how to identify them.

I would like to explain the concept of business opportunity by looking at the definition of marketing. Marketing is not the same as advertising. It is a much broader concept. Unlike advertising, marketing starts even before the product is created.

Marketing is the process of identifying a need in the market, designing a product (good or service) capable of solving the identified need; pricing, promoting and distributing the product to the target customers through various channels. The underlined word “need” is the business opportunity we are talking about here. Businesses start having difficulties when they try to do things the other way round – i.e. creating a product and start looking for problems that the product can solve.

For an idea to qualify as a business opportunity, there must be four elements present, viz: a need, a means to fulfil the need, a method of applying the means to fulfill the need and a method to benefit the provider of the means (the provider of the means is the entrepreneur). In order words, for a need to qualify as a business opportunity, there must be a good or service that can satisfy that need, and the person providing the product should be able to enjoy financial reward for his efforts.

The key to identifying viable business opportunities is to focus on people’s pains and frustrations. In that way, they will be left with no choice other than paying you, if you are able to come up with a solution. Take yourself as an example. What are those products you need that are not readily available to you? Or the product is available but of poor quality or the process of accessing it is time consuming or inconveniencing. If others are experiencing the same problem, then you’ve just found a good business opportunity. The next issue would be that of having the resources, capability and most importantly the guts to solve the problem.

There are several ways of identifying business opportunities. But in order not to confuse you, we’ll be looking at only three:

To be continued......

Cont'd

1. Identifying unmet customer needs. A customer need is unmet when it is important to the customer, but he/she is not satisfied with the solutions currently available or the solution is not available at all. The more important the need and the less satisfied the customer is, the greater the business opportunity.

Most successful businesses have capitalized on the pains, struggles and challenges of people. They were able to achieve success by identifying what the problems were and proffering solutions to them. Since you may not have the funds to hire a market research firm to survey the market, the best option available to you is to sample peoples opinion. Talk to friends and family members to find out what their problems, needs or challenges are. The internet is also a good source to discover what goods and services people are looking for.

Let me share with you how I came up with the idea of a CV writing business I founded two years ago. In 2011, a friend approached me to help him write a CV and cover letter. According to him, he has submitted applications to over 20 companies without hearing a word from them. As at then, I did not even have a CV myself. I scrutinized his CV but couldn’t see any reason he wasn’t getting interviews. So, I sacrificed a couple of hours of my time to do a little research on the current trends in CV, Resume and cover letter writing. That was when my eyes were opened to the mistakes on his CV. I restructured his CV and to my surprise, He was invited for an interview within a month.

Few months later, when I went to the cyber café, before my very eyes, a young lady paid three thousand naira to one of the attendants to help her prepare a CV. In my curiosity, I waited to see the finished results, and it was not even as good as what I wrote for my friend for FREE. I then asked the attendant how often he gets to write CVs for people, and he said, “Almost every day. When business is good, I even write up to three in one day.” That was when it occurred to me that I could make good money by offering the same service. Prior to this incident, I never knew people paid money to get their CV written. The rest is history. Today my CV writing service is recognised as a leader in the CV writing industry in Nigeria.

Stay tuned.

2. Identifying inefficiencies in an existing product or service. You can also source for business opportunities by looking out for good ideas that have not been effectively executed. People value quality products. They also like speedy delivery and convenience. So, If you are able to improve on the quality of an existing product or the process of delivering the product to the customers, you may be in business soon.

3. Import an existing product or service into an untapped market. Lookout for products that were successful in a different geographical location. Maybe you’ve traveled to a different city or town and seen a product (good or service) that is selling very well and is not being offered where you live. You can do some research to see how you can successfully introduce it as something “new” in your area.

Business opportunities come and go. Just like time, they wait for no one. If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you should always lookout for problems experienced by people or businesses. When you finally spot one you have the resources to solve, don't hesitate to take advantage of the opportunity immediately. Otherwise, someone else will do it.

ASSIGNMENT:

1. List ten companies and identify the type of opportunity they leveraged upon to break into the Nigerian market.

2. Pick any town or city of your choice. Identify at least five (05) major problems affecting the residents of the town or city. Are you sure these people are willing to pay for a solution? Which of these problems do you have the resources to solve? Why do you think you will succeed? What threats are you likely to face in this business and what measures will you put in place to minimize their effects on your business?

Have a wonderful weekend!

great and epic post. will say its useful. also found a free sample business plan here

Before we proceed with the next topic, I'll like to have your views on the areas we've covered. With that, I'll be convined that there are people following me.

FREE BUSINESS AND EMPOWERMENT SEMINAR

Entrepreneurship is the major key to economic development; it is the only means of improving the standard of living of every individual.
The only practicable means of poverty alleviation is making people to be independent, making people to be a better entrepreneur.
The major challenge faced by Nigerians, most especially the civil servants is the challenge of life after service
List of BUSINESS you can start with #50,000 naira or less and make decent returns on investment on weekly and monthly basis.
The Highlights of our business and empowerment programs are as follows-

1 Five hot businesses you can start with less than #50,000
2 Five hot businesses you can start with less than #300,000
3 How to be a distributor of these products
A Honeywell, semolina etc
B Plastic products
C Dangote cement
4 How to set a supermarket with #300,000
5 How to make over 100% profit weekly supply a particular to the various end users
6 How to start recharge card printing on a small, medium and large scale
Bonuses
1 How to make Ankara bags, ladies and women’s pulse ?
2 How to make Ankara accessories ?
3 How to be a plastic merchant, supplying plastic containers to liquid soap manufacturers, insecticide, bottle water etc
4 How to get COLLATERAL FREE LOAN between #100,000-#500,000 within 72hours ?
5 How to sell your Ankara bags, pulse, beads and other items on JUMIA, OLX, KONGA ?
6 How to register your business name with CAC within 2weeks?

Seminar date: Saturday, 21/03/2015
Venue: 1/3 Choice Plaza Ire Akari Estate Isolo, Lagos
Time: 10am ( no African time )
Registration fees: Two thousand naira (#2000) only
its first come first serve, all you need to reserve your seat is to text your name, location, email address and telephone number to 08033702558 with the title EMPOWERMENT SEMINAR

INABILITY to THINK is the GREATEST PROBLEM of MAN, if you can THINK enough you will have more than ENOUGH.
The secret of RICHES is SELLING. If you want to be rich and financially free, you must sell something. there is NO FREE MONEY any where, even in FREE TOWN nothing is FREE. Stop dreaming wake up to REALITY, in fact DREAMS are FREE but ACTUALIZATION comes with a PRICE TAG, Dangote sells something, Otedola sells something, Bill gate sells something, check the archives the world’s wealthiest people, they all SELL something. START NOW ,START from you are, SEE you at the TOP

Reserve your SEAT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
For enquiries call
Sam 08033702558
Whatsapp 08033702558

Before we proceed with the next topic, I'll like to have your views on the areas we've covered. With that, I'll be convined that there are people following me.
Jst found dis thread and I must say u ve done a wonderful tin by lettin others av dis knowledge

Businesstools:
Before we proceed with the next topic, I'll like to have your views on the areas we've covered. With that, I'll be convined that there are people following me.

Following...

Just got b this thread and the lecture series so far is quiet expository. Thanks op, u'v got an ardent follower in mme.
So far no questions from me, your post very explanatory, thanks again...
following.....

Love this class, proceed sir...

Its very educative, am following

please @ Businesstool, you know at the beginning of your posting of this ''great and epic '' topic you did tell the whole Nairalanders that you once started same or similar topic before on this Business section in this forum, the reason it never got concluded was becuse of circumstances beyond your control, well you did't specify any reason but for what is happening now we (i.e all your numerous followers) are bebinning to believe that you are discontinueing your post/ epic topic simply b'cos you are not seeing people making comment or asking questions,but NEVER do this (i.e stoping your post),for you know very well that a class that is fourtunate to have a world class teacher (which you are) that knows his or her onions,the students don't get confuse for they all gets a good understanding of his teachings.Never mind we are ALL understanding you sir,when we are lost we will definatetly boombad you with questions.So Mr Businesstool pls come back and finish what you have started,break that ''jink'' of you starting ''this'' topic and not bringing it to an end.Thanks.

Check my signature.

Thanks for this thread, though I'm an entrepreneur, I still learn from your post and will like to get more information from you as you continue with this thread. Meanwhile, I advise those looking for business ideas and how to start them to also visit my blog on small business ideas on http://www.mildbizpreneur.com. Though it's new, I have given detailed information on how to go about each of the post topics that will help you start your own business with little capital. Note that most of the things I publish on my blog are things that I produce.

It was frustrating after like 3years search for white job. After these years of idleness, I decided to venture into business. Where would I start my business? What manner of biz am I going for? How will I get the much needed capital? Many questions I had to settle. At this particular time, my network service provider was messing up, making me to spend a fortune in getting information online. Then I met a man (God sent) that introduced me to mtn sme data share. He said all I need to do is to be referring customers to him, because the business requires a large customer base. On each customer I got a rebate of 100 naira. That was how I accumulated my gains and started being a sponsor in the third month of the business.
I have heard it, never believed though until it happened to me and the fact is you can start a worthwhile business with zero capital
For more information contact Tiptopy consult on the contacts below.
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