Nobody enjoys investing his hard-earned money on businesses that crumble shortly after it kicks off. It hurts when you give someone money to start a business because you believe in helping others to grow only for the person to call you a few months later to say he has lost interest in that business and wants to go into another one. This is something many of us have witnessed.
A lot of people have lost credibility before their sponsors and investors because they couldn’t sustain their businesses. Some jump from one business venture to another without giving the previous one a chance to grow before closing it down. The reason behind this migration, most times, borders around seeking ventures that yield a lot of profits, especially the ones that require little effort. But what these business migrants fail to realise is that businesses, like babies, are meant to be nurtured until they grow.
When a woman becomes pregnant, she starts getting things ready for the baby’s arrival. She registers for antenatal, begins to take her routine drugs, and does everything the doctor and the midwife tell her. She drops her habits that might hurt the foetus and becomes careful not to do things that might jeopardize her own life. She looks out for herself and her unborn child.
Tekedia Mini-MBA edition 16 (Feb 10 – May 3, 2025) opens registrations; register today for early bird discounts.
Tekedia AI in Business Masterclass opens registrations here.
Join Tekedia Capital Syndicate and invest in Africa’s finest startups here.
This is also what happens when people incubate plans to establish businesses. Like the woman that put things in place to prepare for the baby’s arrival, business owners prepare for the setoff of their businesses. However, many of them fail to drop their bad habits that will harm their businesses and they do not take routine drugs (such as training) that will help the businesses to kick off on a good start. By the end of the day, their businesses start poorly like the malnourished babies from careless mothers. Businesses like this, just like those babies, can easily die on arrival.
When women give birth, whether to healthy or unhealthy babies, they begin another round of nurturing. Today, mothers practice exclusive breastfeeding because they want their babies to have a high IQ, develop strong immunity, have less contact with germs, and grow properly while meeting all their milestones at the right time. Some add good baby formula to the diet to ensure that their babies do not starve. Babies are taken to health centres for immunizations to prevent childhood killer diseases. As they grow into infants and toddlers, they are monitored closely because they can easily harm themselves or have accidents. Even as all these were going on, the children’s behaviours are modified to align with the values of their parents and society as well. A lot of works take place in the life of a child from the time he was born to when he turns five. Coincidentally, many businesses become stable at the fifth year of conception.
From the moment a business venture is established, as far as I am concerned, the owner has given birth to an individual. If you look at it, you will see that the same way a birth certificate is created at the birth of a human child is the way a certificate of business registration is given to an individual when he registers his business. As a child is a legal being, so also is a registered business a legal entity. But many people want their businesses to start running the day it was born, forgetting that it took a baby an average of two years to start learning how to run. This is the mistake of many business owners; they expect magic from the moment they start their business.
What am I trying to say here?
The same way we have patience with raising our children from birth is how we should be patient with growing our businesses. The same way we passed through sleepless nights while our babies kept us awake, is how we should endure sleepless nights as we figure out how to take our businesses to the next level. The same way our babies go to sleep healthy and wake up with fever is how our businesses can make a profit today and huge loss tomorrow. And the same way we take our children to hospitals, change their diets if it doesn’t stay well with them, keep them warm and cool, and monitor their abilities to reach the next milestone at the right time is also how we should monitor, evaluate, insure, invest, and seek help when necessary to make our businesses grow.
There is no magic in building a thriving business; you must work for it. Even if you move from one business to another till thy kingdom comes, if you don’t settle down and nurture one of them, you will remain a rolling stone until you burn out. Be patient and grow your business.
I think that this technique works almost everywhere. If you need to see results, you should be patient, continue to work hard and do not get disappointed from your failures. That’s how it works. Not everyone has the power and personality to resist the failures and difficulties, thus not everyone becomes successful. People imagine themselves, that if they start to do something, after a short period of time they should already have outstanding results. Every new project needs your hard work, time and patience. So, there is no need to wait for the results in the beginning, you need to grow your project, experience difficulties and try to continue with the same enthusiasm as it was in the beginning of your journey.