CLICK YOUR BP TO FORTUNE: HOW TO GENERATE A BUSINESS IDEA

Content by Raising Adedeji Jimoh

There is something we might be seeing in this administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and I mean this for those gifted with the real sight – the combination of lighted sight and insight. That thing is the indicator to a paradigm shift in governance system from the past. We have seen the evidence in the people that joined this government with the mentality of ‘business as usual’ and we saw how Mr. President responded to it – not only timely but in required measure too. For one was the case of Dr Beta Edu, the suspended Minister of Humanitarian Affairs. By implication, therefore, we could see a President that appears to connect with the people in taking responsibility – almost about the first of its kind since post-independent First Republic. The foundation intended to be laid here is a comparism of the National Youth Investment Fund (NYIF) at incipient in the era of President Muhammodu Buhari with its renewed nature in the era of his successor.

Those who understand how to read government policies in the right manner of trailing the trend with commitment from genesis would not want to disagree with me that the evaluation of the first NYIF was never an initiative with altruistic motive. It was largely a bureaucracy-centred policy. I say this because it emphasised the prospect of training the youth through a deceptive baiting with empowerment grants than it sought to explore and empower the latent innate entrepreneurship spirit in the real youths with committed prospect of entering the business world.

For the umpteenth time, I said it was largely a job for the civil servants that were already overfed with the cuisine of lush funds because the training contents were duplication of the many other ministries and agencies saddled with skill acquisition programmes for the youths. Ironically, the funding was to be the direct authorisation by then timid and largely blackmailed politicians who held the rights to accountability. Not only in direct misapplication were the NYIF set to be dispensed into the private pockets of the civil servants and their ubiquitous fronts in the private sector, the implementation was also designed with inherent duplicity that allowed exploitation of the prospective applicants by the acclaimed accredited training agents for the programme.

To explain this, it goes that your application, if lucky to be shortlisted, would bring forth an interface requiring you to go through about four-stage process to getting disbursement. The first stage was to be acknowledgement of your payment of N10,000 training fee to the accredited enterprise development entity supposedly allocated to your catchment area. The other stages were so opaque with metaphorical expectations of what a blind could see in a very dark ambience. With landmine of ambiguities discernibly meant to frustrate the applicants in the filing process, so many innocent youths were fraudulently exploited until the backlash of naira prints began to stifle availability of funds to continue the NYIF programme. You would want to call that a divine intervention that halted further expansivity of the inherent fraud to claim more victims.

Now that the fund was resuscitated by this administration of President Tinubu, the missing essentiality was the first to be incorporated. It is the test of applicant’s true interest in pursuing the life of an entrepreneur. The means of doing this is an evaluation of the state of applicant’s mind in how much he/she understands what it takes to be a businessman. While training in basic business management skill, expectedly, remains an integral part of the process to accessing the fund, it is good that your test of owning a business idea to commit the fund is the prerequisite demand and prequalifying stage to shortlisting applicants for the training stage. In other words, you are as good as getting the fund if you have been able to demonstrate in writing your knowledge of the business idea and understanding of the environments you are to operate it. This is the essence of the Business Plan (“BP”) – five-page business proposal – the applicant is required to upload in the filing process.

Unfortunately, while it is not a rocket science to package your business idea into a bankable BP, it could as well be a hindrance to many interested applicants from diving in. This barrier is what Prince Idris Balogun (Oluomo Kaafata), a former Aspirant to the House of Representatives for Alimosho Federal Constituency and currently a Senior Legislative Assistant to the Senate President, intends to eliminate.

According to him, he wanted the youths of Lagos – indigenes and residents alike – to take maximum advantage of NYIF in order to expand the scope of businesses and employment opportunities in the state. “This is one way I think I can further key into the youth development programme of His Excellency, Babajide Olushola Sanwo-Olu, in the efforts to stop youth restiveness in the state”, he said. He also added that it was his way of showing that the era of Princess (Dr) Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire (OFR) is to be driving by meritorious policies with the core mission to impart lives through manpower development. While it matters that the duo are indigenes of Lagos, it does not matter whether Balogun chooses his referential target youths to be the entire state while having in mind the youths of his immediate Alimosho Federal Constituency in focus. As a matter of fact the prospective beneficiaries are Nigerian youths across the federation because of online reach of this opportunity

WHAT IS A BUSINESS PLAN? I would like to begin with a baiting sarcasm that so, to write a bankable BP is this simple! Yes, it is, even from the understanding of what it is meant to be. In my personally coined definition, it is simply a proposal of your aims to pursue a vision of life for your dreamt idea through a carefully outlined plans of the path you are to take. From this sentence, a two-part elements may be seen as the defining words: ‘Idea’ and ‘Life’. It thus implies that a Business Plan is the drawing board phase in the process of evolution of an idea into reality through a space of time. Conclusively on this note, it shows that whatever we might want to discuss in content of a BP, it can only begin from what idea is all about. This is the reason we are starting this series with the subject of ‘how to generate a business idea’. Personally, I always want to shift from this wagon to describe this means of generating ideas as ‘a lesson in how to dream to prosperity’.

It begins that a potentially viable business idea is one generated out of the quests to address a society’s problem. In other words, conception of a healthy business idea could be more feasible from a literary consummation of a person into marriage with his environment. To be in marriage with your environment is to go deep into constant evaluation of evolving changes. Each change is a possibility of evolving opportunities to explore for a new idea – for those with analytical mind for raising probing question anyway. An idea that has no value to offer in solving a problem or provide an alternative of improvement over an establishment could only produce a stillbirth that is analogous to a business failure at incipient.

Thus, the best business idea can only come from the study of your environment. The environment referred to includes your inward person. This implies that the two basic sources of generating ideas are from within you and from the society. From within goes further to be divided into two again: 1) the natural source, which include your hobbies, talents and even what you likes. Here, you find visual arts, music, etc as the feasible idea to explore. 2) the artificial source, which include what you imbibe or acquire from the outside – such as knowledge through formal training. The question now is how do you extract a business idea from all this?