Tips from The 33000

Thursday 3 July 2008

The Fleeting Nature of Ideas

Looking for PHONE NUMBERS, WEBSITES and ADDRESSES of companies in Nigeria? Text the COMPANY NAME to 33000.E.g. Text BRITISH AIRWAYS to 33000.

Sometime in 1997 Reed Hastings tried to return movies he had rented from blockbusters video club and was told they were late. Infuriated he went home and wrote out the business plan for NETFLIX. Along with Marc Randolph they launched the online movie rental website with absolutely NO late fees and no physical address to return movies to. You simply went online, rented your movies and they arrived in the post the next day. ONE BILLION deliveries later with blockbuster itself having copied the model as well as Odeon (the European cinema chain), he had successfully turned an inconvenience into an extremely profitable business. NETFLIX finally turned a profit in 2003 and expects $675 MILLION dollars in revenue for 2008.

The electricity situation in Nigeria needs no one to tell its story. Many parts of the country go weeks without a sign of light and the generator industry is doing a roaring trade. A savvy business man in Enugu, Nigeria took this lack of electricity one step further. With the arrival of GSM companies in Nigeria we also got mobile phones. Mobile phones need to be charged. So this clever fellow set up a charge centre. He purchased a small used generator and created a 30 piece adaptor capable of charging 30 phones at the same time at N100.00 per phone. Charging about 100 phones a day, you have to agree that this man has turned a bad situation into a profitable one.

THINK; the power of thought is unstoppable. Too often we chance upon a great idea and either of two things happen. We ask ourselves how come no one else has done it or we say to ourselves it’ll be too stressful and I don’t have the time. Either way, we avoid taking that idea one step further. Not everyone can be an entrepreneur but everyone must work for a living and in every situation there are inconveniences and challenges waiting to be solved….Every solution comes at a price , the only difference is that this time you’ll be the one charging that price instead of paying for it.

LOOK; The idea that you get out of bed, go to work, pass through the gym ( if at all!) and then return home 5 days a week is simply not acceptable. Look around you and see what needs to get done. What do you think can be done better? If you open your eyes then you will start to see loopholes in the way things work. The more you immerse yourself in the concept of turning a profit the more likely you are to see opportunities. LOOK around your home, office and in your personal business and ask yourself what could I do better and in so doing improve my bottom line.

WRITE IT DOWN; in one of the early posts we spoke about writing your ideas down. The energy around an idea is hard to capture the second time around so write it down as soon as it crosses your mind. Don’t worry about specifics or a financial plan just yet. Just write the idea down, anywhere ( a good place is on your phone or even better on your computer and when you come back again to look at it you’ll be amazed at how you could have written all that) So think of something you’ve always wanted to do and write it down. Give it a week and come back to it. You’ll see exactly what I mean

YOUTH; relatively speaking we are all ‘young’ people. The creative energy of our youth plus the mental and physical strength we have now will one day be gone. There will be no greater regret that NOT having tried. The world economy is getting larger with more things to buy and more places to see. We cannot wait for some magic spell to give us financial independence. The difference between you and the financial successes you read about are courage…. AND ACTION

QUOTE OF THE WEEK; it is better to light one candle that curse the darkness…Eleanor Roosevelt.

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