WHY IDEA, SKILL AND PASSION ARE NOT ENOUGH

Some skills and ideas that some people have passion for are not valuable and profitable again, especially in this modern and digital age. If you have passion for old-fashioned skills and business adventures, it is not too late to be flexible and switch to a more needed and profitable passion now. Let us consider this short story.

Alabi passionately learned how to make local clay pots while in the village with his grandmother. He later came to Ikoyi area of Lagos to start living with his uncle. His uncle asked him what business he would like to do then that he was in Lagos. He said he wanted to maintain his clay pot venture because he had passion for it. He further maintained that he was knowledgeable and skilled in the business and so, it would be nice to leverage that. His uncle tried to let him know that such a business would crash in Lagos before it began but he wouldn't listen. His uncle, knowing that the business would not survive, did not support him financially but Alabi launched the business with the little savings he had from the village.

After one year, Alabi sold just ten clay pots in Lagos. Even the ten pots were bought by ritualists and ''yahoo'' boys who needed the pots to carry their sacrifices to cross-roads. Nobody bought it for cooking in their kitchen. Alabi eventually came to his uncle and asked, ''uncle, which other business do you think I can do and make money in this Lagos?'' His uncle smiled and asked him this rhetorical question in return, ''Didn't I tell you?''

Alabi learned lessons the hard way. You don't have to wait till the situation becomes gloomy like Alabi. The bottom line is that one should learn and master viable and marketable skills; and then nurse passion around them. One should also endeavour to be flexible in passion as passion in just any thing may not yield profitable results.

Passion alone is not enough; value is key!

OWOFEM.

Your idea must add value and solve a people's common problem for you to really make money from it. Don't have passion for what will not put food on your table.