Business beyond today.

Businesses spring up everyday and the drive to empower small businesses has become a global means to building dwindling economies. Small businesses have become the sure route towards sustainable and thriving economies. Every enterprise has a visioneer/founder, Directors/decision makers, team, clientele, vendors and etc. These groups of people are stakeholders involved Business in the success of any enterprise; they have defined contribution, stake and reward geared towards the success of the enterprise. When organization succeeds, these stakeholders benefit and when it fails, crumbles or go bankrupt, they are affected also.

Personally, it grieves my heart that indigenous organizations that are a century in age are scarce in this clime. It is worrisome as there's no certainty that the existing organizations will survive the next century if drastic measures are not taken. In this clime, the rate at which businesses spring up is as remarkable as the rate at which businesses fail, fizzle out or go bankrupt. Looking back, I can't count many companies that I knew as a child that are no more, these were businesses with high potentials and business performance but today, they are no more!

Below are critical points to be assessed and reviewed either before a venture starts, as it is starting or thereafter :-
▪ How long can this business last and How long do I want it to last?
▪ What's the vision of nearest future and the desirable future with feasible timelines
▪ How soon can this business be weaned off me as a business owner?
▪ What does succession mean to my venture and how soon can succession plan be put in place?
▪ Is there room for diversification in the future?
▪ What I'm I putting in place for sustainability?

Why do businesses fail? Every aspiring entrepreneur/business owners/visioneers must be a researcher in this field, to identify the points of failure of the previous generation and determine how to avoid them. Businesses fail for many reasons which includes personal interest, personal weaknesses, leadership failure, mismanagement, lack of structure, lack of innovation, lack of infrastructure, lack of financial aid, policy change and etc. It's therefore important to define sustainable path to follow what will suit our economic and peculiar conditions.

Answering these questions will help to determine how the business will be run, how flexible to be, how to manage scale of operations to ensure sustainability, how to identify opportunities for growth and expansion, alternatives when the unforeseeable happens.

The clarion call is for our generation of business owners to become dogged, learn from the mistakes of last century and build our enterprises as legacies that will live long after we are gone.

Olubamike Oluyemisi Fadipe is a writer with a passion to inspire, impact and motivate.
Email: bankysanya@gmail.com                   Twitter: @Bankysanya

Life in steps. . .

Happy new month.

Wishing you a fabulous February.

As the journey of 2016 doubles up and moves at a high speed, the picture of the desirable, the big dreams, visions and goals remain alive and huge in our minds.

Life journey has many routes and paths that pop up on our drive to the desired end. Sometimes the first path to take is an unusual, unsure, undulating and untarred pathway that differs from our pictured luxurious desirable future. Other times, reality can feel like wilderness experience with cactus plant scattered all over as the only evidence of life on the sand. In the midst of all these are opportunities lurking around, in the worst of all negative situations, there are hidden positives.

Grab every little opportunity that comes your way, nothing is ever too little to start with. Life is progressive, succeeding on one level is usually a precursor to attaining the next level. Every stage of life should lead to an advanced level. While you're waiting for that "big catch" job, start with a volunteering opportunity or a job in a corner with little pay. While you hope for a means of livelihood, look around, meet a need, sell something in exchange for returns. While you search for that big idea that will blow your mind and yield mind-blowing turnover and profit, learn and hone tutelage under one who is already working an idea out.

To become a success; knowledge, skills, imaginative and creative energy are essential drivers. Failure is not the opposite of success, they are allies. Failure helps to put us on our toes, clarify our goals and to put success in proper perspective. Perception of failure and positive attitude towards failure cannot be overemphasized. Reality of success is embedded in hope, faith, will, expectation and perspiration.

"Life is a series of steps. Things are done gradually. Once in a while, there is a giant step, but most of the time we are taking small, seemingly insignificant steps on the stairway of life" ~Ralph. Ranson

Olubamike Fadipe is a writer with a passion to inspire, impact and motivate.
Email: bankysanya@gmail.com
Twitter: @Bankysanya

Wake up and smell a bubbling 2016!

The long awaited new year has come, wherever you are, even if it has not come, it's sure nearer than ever before. For all activities, ideas, plans, dreams, redress, retreat that you have earlier scheduled for "next year", it has finally come! And as the year 2016 beckons, many thoughts run through one's mind at the same time. The thought of how the incumbent year has fared, through the highs and the lows, good times and bad times, failures and achievements.

The question of what 2016 holds can only be fully answered retrospectively after the year is over. The content of the answer unveils itself immediately as everyday of the Three Hundred and Sixty-Five (365) days unfolds and writes the prose. A temporary answer can only be that powered by hope and faith.

We enter into the season of "goal consciousness" and "new year resolutions" as expected since everyone old and young should have new sets of ideals for the year. Oftentimes, the goals and ideals are motivated by many external factors. We all want to be financially independent, have more landmark achievements, gain more grounds, promoted, acquire more assets, be more successful and more relevant in our world and our various spheres of influence. For some reasons, juggling this feat(s) in the new year can be with some excitement and a little bit of apprehension.

I do not intend to reel out how to plan your life or planning the year 2016 or some 7-steps to goal setting. I just desire to pep up your views, faith and hope in the year 2016. The sun of the first day in the new year rises like every other day with no phenomenal nor dramatic event heralding it and so it's easy to slip into thinking its year like every other year, No, it's not! It can't be because you have not seen it before.

Here are a few things you owe yourself in 2016:-

- First things first, pardon yourself and the outgone year with all the failures shortcomings, limitations, challenges, disappointments and all that should have been but did not. Carry out a hard reset and free your mind from the clutters of 2015.

- Think very very big, never mind to start small. "Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures" ~ H. Jackson Brown

- Learn, act and keep acting on positive habits.

"Our repeated failure to fully act as we would wish must not discourage us. It is the sincere intention that is the essential thing, and this will in time release us from the bondage of habits which at present seem almost insuperable" 

~ Thomas Toward

- Move on actively and forward with all ideas and ideals that you've identified as positive. A Mexican proverb says - "Poco a poco les andan lejos" meaning "Little by little, we travel far". Take predetermined little and forward steps daily.

-  Judge yourself daily and reward every little achievement. 

"Not in rewards, but in the strength to strive, the blessing lies" ~ J. T. Towbridge.

- Cross all the 't's and dot all the 'i's and maintain a positive attitude. "Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can" ~ Willis Whitney

~ Get just a reason to live 2016 to the fullest, wake up and smell a bubbling 2016. Welcome to the year of your dream.

Have a beautiful, blissful, fruitful, peaceful, powerful, wonderful and a fabulous 2016.

Olubamike Fadipe is a writer with a passion to inspire, impact and motivate.

Email: bankysanya@gmail.com

Twitter: @Bankysanya