A couple started a game lodge in Botswana 10 years ago. It required building the place from scratch, financing it, advertising, making improvements. After five years the business was on its feet and now 10 years later with the growth in tourism in the country, business has picked up – in the winter season, the game lodge is booked out solid one and a half months in advance.
An overnight business success?
Hardly.
Now that the economic slowdown is biting in the developed countries (including China), jobs (even for graduates) are a lot more scarce than they were couple of years ago.
People out of work who can’t find employment are rushing into starting small businesses on an unprecedented scale.
Governments are waking up too late to small businesses job creation potential and dishing out incentives.
Desperate to win votes, they are offering low-interest loans, tax-breaks and skills training – none meaningful enough, all a little too late and no change to rigid labour requirements and no interest in speeding up registration of businesses.
On-line and off-online business crows and vultures are swirling around with treacherous and cunning instant success biz-ops, business-in-a box opportunities and magic business systems.
In the deep recesses of the human brain where people crave to get something for nothing and desire fast and easy ways to make money, the enticing offers of instant wealth seem so irresistible.
New businesses have high insomnia-inflicting risk.
You’ve seen the business failure statistics – one or two in 10 businesses make it after five years. How then can these business-in-a box schemes reduce the odds of failure?
They can’t!
They are offered to make the sellers rich, not the buyers.
Business success takes time.
It usually requires a deep experience and skills base, passion and – horror of horrors – it demands constant attention and hard work.
If you’re starting out from scratch with a new business, it’s a stronger proposition to come up with an idea of your own that meets a hungry market need than buy a risky second-hand business with a declining customers base.
Especially attractive if you market products and services that offer greater value and more savings in this economy.
Be careful of the totally new in a market where customers are highly sceptical and are more informed today than ever before because of the Internet.
Newly invented products need a long runway before they take off.
And they burn piles of cash for marketing.
Be wary of the circling crows waiting to prey on the greedy, unwary and naive.
Short of starting your own lottery machine, businesses building nearly always requires time, hard work, energy and passion.
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