Veteran explores how SME owners can prevent knock out

Apart from having good ideas, finding cash, having technical and management skills to succeed, any business owner starting a business based on ideas from scratch must develop an inner strength to prevent being knocked out.

This, according to Uzo Nduka, chief executive, Domino Information Company Limited (DICL), is an inner quality every chief executive officer of a growing firm must have. “If you do not have it, one challenge or the other will knock you down and out. Being knocked down is an everyday experience for a business owner but being knocked out is not. That one is only the experience of those SME owners who have not found the inner strength to say I am down but not out,” says Nduka.

He says a knock down in business may be as a result of external situation or the mistake of the business owner. Whatever may be the cause, there are solutions and DICL during its annual business planning workshop in March, which will hold in Lagos and another in Port Harcourt, will be bringing in Sam Ohuabunwa, a veteran business manager, to coach participants on how to seek solutions to problems that arise in business that could prevent a knock out if not checked.

“Sam Ohuabunwa’s speech will be highly inspirational because he is a veteran in the management of businesses,” Nduka says. Whether caused by a mistake or external factors, Nduka points out that the entrepreneur can institutionalise processes within the business to prevent the re-occurrence of such negative effects on the company.

Explaining the reasons for the choice of topics at this year’s DICL annual planning workshop, Nduka explains the difficulty people building businesses from scratch have to face, saying “it is a very difficult task for anyone to try to build a business in today’s economy, especially when you are building a business that is founded on ideas. If you are building a business that is founded on turning over money such as buying and selling, it is a lot easier.

“Unfortunately, 80 percent of the population of the world do not have enough money to turn over, so they must start their businesses on the basis of ideas if they decide to start a business. Interestingly, businesses that are started on the basis of ideas tend to outlive those that are started on the basis of just turning over cash.”

Speaking further, he says “nine out of every 10 persons that wants to start a business will tell you they have challenges with funding, meaning they do not have a lot of cash to start with. So, what they need to start with would be the idea or solution or thoughts in their hearts, in their mind. That is the starting point for majority of us.

“When you start from that point, you will find out it is a very tough task and you will often be discouraged when you are dealing with these tough tasks, you will often get to the point where you will say I cannot cope anymore because there may be no evidence that you are on the right path. You are like a man or woman on a long journey that has no clearly charted routes to follow to that destination, and you need various kinds of vehicles to be able to travel along that pathway.”

Further driving home the point, he says “for everyone of us who is on this entrepreneurial journey, it means that at many points we all get discouraged, we search for evidence that we are on the right path, we all seek encouragement from various sources, we seek inspiration from sources bigger and deeper than us, we seek strength from people bigger than us. So, at the end of the day we all need inspiration and encouragement.

“So, this year, during our workshop, Sam Ohuabunwa will help address issues on how you can carry on when you are discouraged, when you cannot see a way forward, on how to hang in there when the challenges are overwhelming, when the issues are too much for you to bear, when you do not know how you are going to pay salary next month, and perhaps you are already owing about two months salary and you can see it on the faces of your employees that the non-payment of salaries is taking its toll on them.”

By:  OLUYINKA ALAWODE