Do you know your customers and Partners?

How long did or has it taken you to know your real market ?

I must confess that one of the biggest mistakes I made with my business (Nichol Investments) that failed in 2010 was trying to sell products, ideas and services to the wrong people

I was extremely excited seeing myself start a third company in addition to NBK-Metal Scrap Dealers Ltd & NBK-Plus (U) Ltd. I made a lot of assumptions about who I thought would be my best partners and best customers to subscribe to my services and buy products. I just thought they’d be willing to pay, little did I take time to ask myself why they will be persuaded to buy. To cut the story short, with majority of those assumptions I found myself draining slowly which situation landed me into bankruptcy and left me with a debt that took me three years to pay.

Most of budding entrepreneurs get excited and focus on creating what to sell forgetting to analyze and know the real people and why they will buy the services or products . Don’t take the time to fully understand only who your customers are but continue deep to know what they really need and what will motivate them to purchase. On the other hand don’t assume that every person who will invest few notes of money in the business is worth to be partners. A good partner is that person who looks into business beyond money , he must be that person whose skills and DNA matches value creation, resilience and the core vision of the company

Amazing Facts about Hiring a professional cleaning company in Uganda.

One way for business owners to focus more on their business is to turn the cleaning duties over to well-respected professional cleaning services. There are countless benefits of having someone else responsible for cleaning the office, including:

When business owners delegate cleaning duties to office staff, morale can sink. Office workers do not want to clean the bathroom, empty the trash, dust, etc. Allow your workers to do what they do best and leave cleaning to the experts. The experts are passionate and trained about every work, so they fear no space at work places.

A Professional cleaning company is skilled in properly cleaning, dusting, and sanitizing. There is much more to keeping an office or facility clean than simply making sure everything is orderly. These experts know what to do in order to ensure a clean environment. As dust builds, offices can easily become respiratory hazards. Thorough dusting can help ensure your office space has minimal allergens.

Professional cleaning companies can ensure certain products are kept on hand like paper towels in the restroom as well as toilet paper. Business owners can easily overlook things like this given their other responsibilities. Office workers, customers/clients, deserve to have everything they need in the restroom.
When offices are clean and sanitized, those working in the office are less likely to get sick. When workers are sick, there is always a loss in production or output due to less concentration and absenteeism.

Entreprenuers: Beyond wildest dreams.

Originally shared on Blue ocean strategy.

Zuckerberg founded Facebook at age 20  when he was still in college. Zuckerberg is now one of the wealthiest people in the world, valued at more than $40.7 billion. Sergey Brin and Larry Page founded Google when they were both 25. British entrepreneur Carl Churchill started his first Web design business at age 12. Today he’s worth more than $10 million. Juliath Brindak began creating sketches of characters at age 10, and then developed a complementary social-media platform at age 16. Her company, Miss O & Friends is now worth an estimated $15 million and the list goes on and on…

But, what exactly are these entrepreneurs doing right that’s making them succeed while still being so young and inexperienced? What can entrepreneurs at any age learn from them. Here are the key things that make entrepreneurs wildly wealthy at a young age:

• They innovate and create their own markets.
  Successful entrepreneurs go beyond just creating better versions of what is already in the market. They also invest their time and resources into creating something totally new, bringing to life systems that are more efficient and/or more stylish. In doing so, they create their own market and offer people better solutions and experiences. No entrepreneur epitomizes this innovative genius better than Steve Jobs. Jobs introduced the stylish, high-end Macintosh computers, which etched their own space in the computer market and continue to dominate that market today. Even Bill Gates acknowledged his tech rival’s genius when he said:
  “To create a new standard, it takes something that’s not just a little bit different; it takes something that’s really new and really captures people’s imagination—and the Macintosh, of all the machines I’ve ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard.”

• They are risk takers and action oriented.
  No ‘analysis paralysis’, here. These successful entrepreneurs just do it. They take risks. From dropping out of college to playing the stock market and venturing into new industries, these entrepreneurs are risk takers.

• They seek the support of people that can help them grow.
  No entrepreneurial venture really succeeds without utilizing the right people. Successful entrepreneurs know this. They utilize the power of other successful and well-known people (like the “sharks”) to build credibility. Not connecting with the right people can cost you your success as an entrepreneur.

• They see opportunities and then exploit them.
  As a student, George Burgess had trouble finding any useful apps to help him prepare for his A-levels. The fact that there are numerous apps in the market for just about anything you can think of, and that none of them helped students get through their education struck him as an ideal opportunity for investment.

• They use self-initiative and work hard and smart.
  The only way to build something great is to work really hard and really smart. An entrepreneur needs to spot opportunities and then take it upon himself to step in and fill that need. According to Facebook’s Zuckerberg, you should devote yourself to what you are doing as an entrepreneur and if this means missing a few nights out then so be it.

• They are strategic thinkers; they work on the business and minimize the effort spent on operation of the business.
  Successful entrepreneurs understand the necessity to grow their business in as many different ways as possible in order to reach more people. This could be really costly and inefficient; but instead of skipping it, successful entrepreneurs make use of tools to help them achieve the purpose. They know that with a wise tool that can facilitate them to manage different selling channels effectively is halfway to success. Tools like Shopify minimizes the operation costs of the business by facilitating selling of products and services across different channels, so entrepreneurs can concentrate on the strategies of growing the business.

• They are creative and continually come up with great new ideas.
  Successful entrepreneurs not only take initiative, but also make fast decisions and adjust along the way- quickly! That’s because people tire of commodities fast, and if you don’t create something new and interesting, you will get left behind. Bill Gates – who himself dropped out of Harvard to co-found Microsoft with Paul Allen, and was the youngest billionaire in the world at just 31 years old- revealed the secret to his phenomenal success saying, “In three years, every product my company makes will be obsolete. The only question is whether we will make them obsolete or somebody else will.” Constantly adapting, improving, and putting a bit of yourself and your personality into your products is what will keep people begging for more.

• They stay patient and focused as their business grows.
  Good things come to those who wait. Knowing how to let things grow and develop, while focusing on doing a variety of tasks that help the process along, is an important part of becoming a successful entrepreneur. Too many people give up too soon because of impatience. But building successful businesses takes time, even for such gifted people as Steve Jobs. Jobs didn’t really get on the map until the Macintosh was invented eight years after he and Steve Wozniak founded Apple Inc. at 21 and 26 years of age respectively. You need to keep focused and stay patient to succeed as an entrepreneur.

• They diversify and re-invest their riches
  The most successful entrepreneurs diversify and re-invest their riches. This ensures that they never go broke. Gary Martin, a young Irish entrepreneur began running his own nightclub at the tender age of 15 (the drinking ages in the U.K. are vastly lower than in the U.S.). By the time he was 17, he had moved on to property management. By 18, he was worth $20 million and counting. He understood the importance of re-investing and diversifying your wealth. Unfortunately, not all entrepreneurs understand this fact.Andrew Fashion designed mini rocket launchers and was worth more than $2 million by the time he was 20.