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The Travel chronicles of a sorry Nigerian to Asia. Chapter four Writing in progress. Related
“The only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risk” Mark Zuckerberg
By Jolade
Have you ever thought about starting up a business with someone or a group of people?
It has been proven over time that great businesses are built on effective partnerships and collaborations.
Many companies home and abroad were founded based on ideas conceived by someone or a group of people who are the founding fathers. A good number of Banks, Audit firms, conglomerates etc. boast of incorporation founded on effective partnerships.
Get it right and you may have landed yourself a goldmine but otherwise the dominos would come crumbling. That said, there is a right and wrong way to go into business partnership with other people. Follow the wrong path, and what started off as an amicable business relationship could end up dissolving into one filled with blame and bitterness.
I will share an experience.
Some years back, an old associate reached out to me from the blues about a fantastic business idea that was bound to turn my life around if I could team up with him. By the time he gave me the breakdown of the business plan it was easy to catch the excitement.
As a corporate worker, I was not really adept with the trading and importation business, which meant that I had to rely on his supposed expertise for execution. With the benefit of hindsight, I can say categorically that I was bamboozled by his entrepreneur skills way back in the university. He was one of those guys who would either sell a flash drive filled with music, or a photocopied and neatly bound textbook, and many more of such petty business ideas. So when he said to me that I would make two million five hundred thousand in returns within 6 months if I put one million naira into his business, I jumped at it. It looked good on paper and that was a cool 250% ROI! Sweet deal. What could possibly go wrong?
Ladies and gentlemen, what went wrong was that I lost my money without getting a call back as to why. The rest they say is history.
Of course, this is just a compressed version of the story and one would expect I should have known better, especially with my background in finance. But did I learn a lesson?
Oh Yes, I did! And I will be sharing some learning points on what to look out for when going into a business relationship.
Let us get some things clear, not everyone can run a business! But we must have multiple streams of income, whether we are in paid employment or not and this is where investing comes in handy.
There are many channels you can invest your funds; the stock, bonds, insurance savings, banks savings product, mutual funds etc. these are the types of investment you go for if your plan is to set funds aside over a long period of time and you want to rest easy. In short, they are the safest and least volatile bet, well except for investing in stock, especially with the way the market is right now.
However, some of us are bold and audacious enough to invest directly in viable business ideas and not through some private equity firms or the likes with an interest to build businesses. In essence we have no choice but to partner and invest our liquid cash in viable business collaboration with the hope of getting a healthy return on investment. This article is for people in this category.
Another thing to note is that although there’s no surefire way to avoid making a business mistake when it comes to partnering with others, but paying attention to some obvious signs can help us switch course before it’s too late.
So how do we make effective business partnering decisions? Here is what I am sharing with you based on experience and opinion-
Keep in mind that these are just some of the important elements that should be discussed, agreed upon, when a decision to go into a business collaboration is being made. I wish you a successful journey should you decide to take the plunge!
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