How to lose money in Nigeria

Dear Friends,

I got an email yesterday asking me to advice on what an entrepreneur needs to do to suceed in Nigeria. I decided to start with guaranteed ways to lose money using certain case stories. It's amazing how naive Nigerians seem to be about proper busines practices. It's called a business and NOT play. So I have decided to put together a series of proven ways to lose money in Nigeria. The rest are published on my personal blog.

HOW to lose money in Nigeria

1. Don't get financing Right.
Business in Nigeria gups up money. Accept that reality. Most times, people under estimate how much their business cashflow needs. If you think you need N200,000 better prepare to find financing of at least 3 times that amount cause as soon as you start running in everyday operations, you'll discover you need more and it'll be too late to start looking for more investors to loan or borrow you money.Nigeria's Naira is not as valuable as before. How long does it take before you exhaust N1 000? It takes me one phone call.

2. Jump in before you assess the risk
The simplest of businesses can defeat you if you don't assess the risks. Thats why you need a business plan and a menthor who can candidly assess the risks. Several firms have folded up in Nigeria because they did not factor the cost of energy into their operations. Recently, Dunlop folded up cause of energy concerns. Ask even your neighbourhood barber and he'll tell you that the largest of his expenses are on Energy to power up generators. Recently in my firm, my managing partner discovered that we spent more on power supply than we spent on Phone calls cause we kept running on generators and the fuel and maintenance figures were high. We had to make a decision toreplace our computers with Laptops with 5hr battery life for all staff. We cut energy expenses by 80%.

3. Invest in a dying market cycle...
Wake up, Nobody is going to buy pentium 2 computers. Don't bother importing them. One of my clients is stuck with millions of inventory they can't sell. Watch the trends. Don't start up a Newspaper house, in two years, Nigerians will start reading news delivered straight to their Amazon Kindle- If you want to invest money into an expensive press, you'll be losing. The trends show that Newspresses will become more obsolete, think twice.... think twice before you lose N20 million

to be continued tomorrow