Business Development. Ideas Development

1. How to Convert Your Ideas
to Business
By
Opeyemi Praise

2. How do you convert your ideas to
business?
 Business Plan!
 Your Business Plan is the first manifestation of your ideas in the physical realm..
Take it seriously.
 Mediocrity is thinking it is not important to have a business plan before you do
business.
 Business Plan helps you to think through your business and gather important facts.
No matter what your business is about you need a plan!

3. The Business Plan will Reveal Your
Ignorance and/or Knowledge
 It will reveal if you actually have enough knowledge about the new territory
 Understudy the industry you want to start a business;
 Understudy the current players (your competitors) in the industry
 List thee current players and understudy their operations.. Day-to-day operations,
you have a lot to learn from that.
 Ask question – what is the cash flow? Who are the major clients? Where are they
failing? Who are the customers? How do they pay?
 Sure, your business plan will make you ask questions? Find answers to those
questions.
 In finding answers to the questions, you will acquire so much knowledge and skills.

4. The Business Plan will help you re-
design/fine-tune your product/service
 You will know more about your customers if you did a good job on your business
plan; what you know about the customers will help to fine-tune your product.
 Good selling product is usually customer-centric. We are in generation where
customers are very knowledgeable and they demand so much.
 Your product should be customer-centric! So you need to know the customer!
 Don’t build a product that’s good, build a product that’s great!

5. One by one Content of the Business Plan
Lets go through what needs to be in your business
plan!

6. Value Proposition
 What value are your bringing to all stakeholders.
 The king stakeholder is the Customer.
 What values would your product give to customers?
 What values would your product give to investor?
 What values would your product give to society?
 What values would your product give to employees?

7. Revenue Model
 How will you get revenue? How will you make profit?
 How will you price your product?
 What payment method best-suite your business?
 Do a scan of the industry for ideas or find the pricing of the closest industry to
yours if it is a fresh idea/new innovation.
 Example: we understudied DealDey, Jovago etc.
 You need to know the way money comes to your business based on the type of
business;
 A. Low Volume, High Margin Business – Construction, Real Estate,
 B. High Volume, Low Margin Business – e-Commerce, Oil Retailing,

8. Competitive Environment
 Who determines how much you charge on your product/service?
 There is no strategy outside your competitors; you must know your competitors
well and find strategy to crack a niche for yourself!
 Who are your competitors? Even if it is a new idea/innovation, your competitor
maybe old ways of doing things.
 Answer the question, what options do people have if they wouldn’t subscribe to my
service?
 What are your competitors’ competitive advantages? How can you crack them and
create a niche for yourself?

9. Competitive Advantage
 What advantage do you have over your competitor? This might location, new
innovation, cost/pricing, quality, expatriate, superior materials, new machine, new
processes, speed, could be anything. Like same cake example;
 I saw some videos on the internet and I see that cake making has really moved on.
If someone gets hold of this new way of making cake, he/she will probably do a lot
better than the guys currently their doing it the old way.

10. Marketing Strategy/Market Research
 Most of the work of the business plan is on knowing the market!
 We will get back to this in good time! Soon! Just hang-on!

11. Organization Development
 How do you intend to build your team?
 What work environment or structure would you want in your start-up?
 What workplace culture would you want?
 How would you recruit/what model of recruitment- recruit young/fresh grad as
intern and groom them? Recruit experienced?
 Work remotely or at your office?
 How much do you intend to pay your staff etc. You might project this – say, first 1-
2 years, outsource staff, 2-5 years full staff etc.

12. Management Team
 who and who would you want on board?
 Would the start-up involve skill-set you don’t have?
 How would you engage people you are bringing on board – as employee,
contractors, partners?
 Does your work involve legal stuffs, then you might need a lawyer on board. Etc.
 The scope of this project does not cover ‘How to choose a partner’.
 But one word on choosing partners; consider core values and ease of working
together than any other things (skill-set, moneybags, church member, etc)

13. Raising Funds
 Personal Savings – the initiative always gets its investment first from you. In fact,
nobody will invest into your idea until they see how much you have invested in it.
 Family friends and well-wishers – it still works especially because we are favoured.
 Strategic partners - partner with guys who have money and would invest in good ideas.
There are lots of people who have millions in their saving account; they are not doing
any projects with them.
 Banks – bank interest rates are killing but CBN has mandated them to have SME funds.
If you have strong business plan you will get some.
 Traditional sources – Incubators – Commercial banks – Angel investors – Venture capital
firms
 Crowdfunding

14. Shareholders Agreement
 It is not part of the business plan; but I feel it is worthy of mention.
 Shareholders Agreement is a legal document that addresses the stakes, role of
each shareholder with the view to keeping the business alive and prospering.
Consult a lawyer but be very involved as you will bound by it.
 Conflict may happen anytime; the fact that everybody is happy now does not mean
issue might not come-up.

15. Shareholders Agreement
 Content of Shareholders Agreement is as below, amongst other things;
 Equity share of each shareholders what percentage of the profit/loss will each
shareholder have.
 How to dilute the share?
 What is the rights and role of each shareholder especially those that will be involved in
the operations of the business.
 What percentage of the returns is plunge back into the business before shareholders
get their dividends?
 At what maturity (could be measured in revenue, returns/profit, age of the business etc)
of the business will shareholder begin to have returns?
 Don’t say because you have a good relationship with your shareholders now there won’t
be issues later.
 Shareholders agreement are confidential.

16. Market Strategy
 Don’t be overly impressed by the grammar!
 Create End User Profile (Persona) - An end-user profile is a description of a
narrowly defined subset of end-users with similar characteristics, similar needs, and
word-of-mouth.
 End User Profile will consist of:
 1. Demographic
 2. Motivation
 3. Behaviour

17. Market Strategy
 Demographic should reveal:
 1. Age Range
 2. Gender
 3. Geographical Area
 4. Income Range
 Motivation should talk about:
 1. What motivates them?
 2. What do they fear the most in the world?
 3. Religious beliefs, superstitions, biases etc

18. Market Strategy
 Behaviour should answer the questions?
 1. Where do they go for dinner?
 2. Where do they go before work?
 3. What newspapers do they read?
 4. What websites?
 5. What TV shows do they watch?
 6. Where do they go for leisure?

19. Market Strategy
 Also answer the questions:
 1. Common Problem (Pain Points)s that the End Users are Facing and your Problem
Solves
 2. What class or profile of people patronise your competitors?
 3. Find lead customers that you will satisfy so they can in-turn give your referrals.

20. Market Survey
 Do your market survey. Get specific information from your potential end user; if
you have a template it is better. Let them observe the template/sample product.
Welcome feedback; good or bad. Don’t be emotional about it (especially ladies)
when they tell you a particular thing is missing in your product.
 From experience, people who tell you what you need to work-on on your product
really want the best. Engage them more. Find out why and what they saw.
 People who just say all the good things, most time, I mean most time, just want
you to feel good. They can help you improvement endeavour.

21. Give Expression to Your Business Plan in
this Realm; it will help pray and know what
Areas in the Plan to Pray about More!

22. Thank You…