₦airaland Forum

The naira is becoming increasingly devalued.
I remember when a new galaxy note was spot for below 100k and a less than 10yr tokumbo car could be bought below 1.2mil
Now basic stuff has become luxuries while salaries have stagnated

GreatResearcher1:
Women are very stupid sets of items

Are you not the one who was dealt with by a lady and her boyfriend?
The problem is with people like you who are dull but think themselves intelligent. I can tell you that the average woman you see on the street has more brains than you.

Abia1stboy:
Ebonyi doesn't need an airport. They should concentrate on human capital development because more than 80% of ebonyi people are still either gala hawker or truck pusher. If for any reason Ebonyi wasted its scarce resources to build an airport, how many people from Ebonyi can afford flight ticket? I am sure Ebonyi state government will not make such a mistake. States like Anambra and other frontline states are the states that should be talking about airport. Ebonyi should at 80% of its resources on human capital development.

You're wrong. There is no reason why any state in Nigeria should not have a functional airport talk more an Eastern state. Ebonyi has made tremendous progress of late especially when you compare it with the educationally disadvantaged states on the late 90's.
If states like Jigawa can have an airport then some Eastern states should have more than one airport even. An airport for a state is a basic amenity that helps to improve interconnectivity and not luxury. Nigeria is a country of over 200 million. It's our delayed rate of development that make us hype some of these things

Calyb:

@op
Nice work... Any updates on experiences so far? Would be nice to share

westerk:
This is one of the most enlightening thread ive read on nairaland in a very long time. Kudos to all those that shared their experiences. I've also invested in people especially friends and I've lost money too. Actually I have a job so it's more of investing in friends who are not really employed. So I've learnt the following
1. Most business people feel that their major problem is money, once they get funding their business will explode. Based on my experience with helping friends fund their business ive realised that what most entrepreneurs lack is ideas. Secondly a lot of them do not even do proper reaserch before going into the business. At the end they will lose investors money. That's what happened to me.
2. Believe me there are lots of people who have money to invest but d challenge is most people that will come to u to fund their businesses have not even sat down to do extensive research before looking for investors.
I will explain my experiences briefly. So i have a friend from d middle belt, told me about soya beans business, that we will buy, store and after some months we will resell and make profit. So i sent money we bought about 80 bags between November 2018 and January 2019. Cost of the soya beans plus bagging and transportation to where we stored at TARKA l.g came down to about 12,000 plus per bag . (Based on his so called research we should be able to sell each bag for at least 18,000 in 6 months time). To cut the long story short the price kept dropping we ended up selling them at 9,500 per bag to other sellers in benue in January this year.
We also planted yams, were able to harvest about 1,800 tubers of various sizes. The challenge has telling me now is how to get buyers for the yams. Meaning he didn't even consider where he will get buyers after harvesting. It's currently being priced anyhow at benue ( 100 big yams at 30,000) quite unbelievable.
Another of my friend gave him 400,000 he sells all this alkaline water. Buys from unique and sells in owerri. Later for to know that he sells on credit mostly to civil servants in d state and its always difficult getting them to pay u the money. He still has over 250,000 outside after I have him d money over 5 months ago.
I'm not really bothered about the monies that ive lost, it just reinforced my belief that a lot of so called business people won't sit down and and take a lot of time to research about they business they want to go into before disturbing people for money.
Another one based in Benin is now telling meme about butcher business , that they buy cows from d Hausa people there take to abbatoir, sell to middlemen and consumers and make up to 40,000 per cow, did a lot of good analysis. But based on my experience all those are just analysis nothing more. I didn't even bother with him even though he's still calling. For me I'm not really d one that lost , i invested the money in them to help them stand on their feet, unfortunately they didn't do t heir homework well, and i have no intention of giving any of them even a job. As a friend ive done my bit for them.
So for every businessman out there take time out to do ure research because u might never get a second chance from d investor once u flop. And believe me there are thousands of people out there with money to invest.

While I agree with most of what you said. I don't agree that lack of ideas is the reason why businesses fail.
All the instances you gave had fantastic ideas, but none were successful.

The issue is that most people have been deceived by the cliche 'have an idea that can change the world' What changes the world are not just ideas but hard and smart work. I just mentioned on another thread that no matter how spectacular that idea is and how much business planning goes into it (not discounting the importance), most 'ideas' fail when put into the real world. There are lots of things you cannot envisage on paper but one can only talk of its viability when it's test-run


For most of the start-up businesses you mentioned, I usually advice people to model what Igbos did after the Civil war that helped to spread wealth. If it's something people are already doing, even if you have much money, go and understudy or work for a successful person in the line of business you want to venture into. Learn the ropes, then go out and first start small. It's much easier to scale up after getting a successful model than scale a non-succesful mega project down into profitability

westerk:
The truth is that businesses that are extremely profitable are discovered by the individual. In this part of the world those that are into very profitable businesses hardly reveal the businesses or trade secrets to others. It's something people have to discover for themselves. I'm not a business person o , I'm just stating what ive observed among business people / entrepreneurs.

Sadly you're right and it's similar world over...
It must not be something an individual is currently working on, it may be something they did in the past or something open to everyone (e.g stocks, Forex) but they were able to turn to make profit. The amount of detail shared is purely at each persons discretion

These was once a thread here someone put up to chronicle his business activities. He was involved in lots of legit and basic stuff (like tomato resale, Forex...) and they were very profitable... It was an inspiration to lots of people

I've come to see that people overate the 'idea' factor..... Majority of people with fancy ideas make nothing. It's putting the idea to work that counts...and in real life, out of 10 fancy ideas put to work, about 2 or 3 may become viable in the long run

alkines:
Pple don't really want to show their arsenal

Not good.... It's easy to share bad experiences, it should be easier sharing good ones.... There's enough room in the sky to contain all birds that want to fly

More experiences house.... It should be a good learning curve for all

For me, presumably, it was during the previous naira devaluation when Buhari took over.... It was so clear the naira wouldn't hold....bought some dollars and later sold in naira....about 500k in... Was a significant sum at the time

Currently in to a number of investments but none is yet to
really pay out.

@lalasticlala front page.

dawnomike:
My bwst investment this lockdown period has been Binary options... It is as though this period is my lucky charm period

NB: Please do not try binary options like me ooo... YOU WILL LOSE YOUR MONEY
It is like fortune just sent luck to me this time ni o.. it is not always like that

I have not heard about binary options.... Can you expatiate?
It's not limited to the lockdown... Your best financial investment in life so far

I made the thread below as a follow up on this... Feel free to share thoughts
https://www.nairaland.com/5775951/what-best-financial-investment-how#88129457

I made the thread below as a follow up on this... Feel free to share thoughts
https://www.nairaland.com/5775951/what-best-financial-investment-how#88129457