Starting a Business
I think this is hardest choice you have to make when you finally realize that you are an adult and you need to be self reliant! At this time you probably have finished college and your folks no longer want you in their nest. It's even harder when you are a man - your primal instincts are on high alert, this is when you heed to the words of that song "my body is telling leave by my mind is telling me stay" and off you're at door with your valuables staring into the abyss of uncertainty wondering how you grew up soo fast!
Worry not my friend, you are not alone! It is called a rite of passage - where you have to leave the nest to go and fend for your self. Two questions linger,
- What next?
- Employment or Business?
What next is between you and God! Employment or Business? Can be advised, but as for me i chose the later.
Starting out
Now that i had decided to go the business route, my biggest question was how i was going to start without capital! All i had was an idea in my head (we had earlier mentioned that an idea isn't even worth the paper it's written on) even the greatest of ideas isn't worth more that $10! Savage right?
I had faith in my idea though, all i needed was someone to pitch to and i was confident they would come on board. I was pretty sure only a couple of guys were doing this business in Kenya at that particular time and an additional competitor (me) wouldn't even be noticed.
I was advised to write the idea down on paper in form of a Business plan and look for organisations that offer Angel investments, i downloaded a Business plan format and later on went hunting for AIs. To cut the long story short i found one and was loaned kes 250,000 or $2500 to start the business that i do to date.
Challenges
Capital
When your business equipments are deemed valueless by financiers who will only accept the traditional form of collateral (land and vehicles) then this becomes a major obstacle for growth. The government institutions set up to fund the youth asks that you bribe them to get funding!Business systems
Without meaningful growth, systems become useless to you. You end up becoming the owner, the manager, the accountant, the marketer, the driver and everything else in your small business because you can't hire.!Marketing
Having a one on one with your customers become hard, you are therefore not able to discuss all the challenges, feedback (negative or positive) and doing follow ups.
Expansion and Growth
Expansion becomes gradual but steady. You would wish that it's a little bit faster but we settle on slow steady growth instead of none. For us to realize this slow growth we SAVE and reinvest our savings back into the business for further expansion. Waiting becomes the challenge now!
How does it relate to Steem?
A lot of burden has been taken of your back by steemit.
- The idea is there
- Registration is easy
- No capital required
- Systems are set
- The market is there
What you need to do to grow
- Quality posts NO plagiarism
- Network, by joining a discord community and regularly upvoting and commenting.
- Re-investing your SBDs by promoting your posts to earn a profit.
- And i wish there could be whales to give out SBDs Loans to be paid back with interest (feel free to use this idea if you think it could work, just mention
thought of it first) ☺
When we Enterprise Steemit, we can be guaranteed of Growth and Reaping well in due time.