Objectify your business
At this age it is hard for someone to depend on a job and a monthly salary, because frankly speaking jobs are hard to get. There are quite a few employment opportunities unlike years ago when everyone who “finished school” got a job immediately! Take for instance in the middle of this month (July 2015) when thousands of young people went to an interview for jobs at the National Audit Office (NAO) whereas only a little more than 80 people were needed to be hired, and that is just one example, not to mention the Immigration Office one and others similar to those.
Those are just to show the dire need for employment in this country, and that is why many young people are now opting to employ themselves in different sectors. Some are starting their own businesses, others are starting small industries and others service companies. It is a good strategy and it has a lot of benefits, of which we will talk about in the future.
It is important, however, to understand that self-employment needs a lot of prior planning. It is important to plan before undertaking any action. They say, “Failing to plan is planning to fail”.
But before any planning, one must know exactly why they are even interested in owning their own business/company and being their own boss. That is why one must set objectives. An objective is something that one’s efforts are intended to attain or accomplish; purpose; goal; target. The following are some examples of different objectives for a company:
- To achieve a target market (customers) share. There are many companies: small, medium and large and each existing company has its own segment/section of customers using that particular product/service. So a company’s aim/objective can be to get a certain percentage of customers using that product/service by maintaining its current customers and capturing potential customers (even from competing companies). This can be trough advertising and/or bonus packages.
- To create employment and keep employment agitation to a minimum. Some companies are started for the sole aim of creating employment and ensuring that their employees are happy and satisfied with the work environment and pay.
- To create an ever expanding empire. There are people who start their businesses so as to create an empire. An empire is an extensive group of businesses or companies under a single supreme authority. Normally these people would buy other companies as well as they expand, and they would own others in joint ownership. The main aim here is to have many businesses or companies, and to make sure that they keep expanding.
- To maximize profit. We could easily say that this is the reason for the formation of many businesses. People want to make profit and have a reliable source of income. It is a good motive because the concept of profit is very motivating. Profit is the remainder of the income after all expenses have been paid.
- To maximize the owner’s wealth in the long term. This may be closely related to the concept of profit but it is not the same thing. You see, the wealth of the owners is entwined in the whole business, not just the profit it makes; the assets, the liabilities, the customers etc, are all concerned with the wealth of the business owners. So it may be that the business/company is started so as to maximize the wealth of the owners, and this means to ensure a steady growth of the business. If profit can be compared to a golden egg, then wealth means owning the goose that lays the golden eggs and maintaining it so as to have a constant supply of golden eggs.
It must be understood that no one business or company can work towards all the above mentioned objectives. One has to choose to stand for one objective, and the rest in the list will be assisting that one objective to be met. So choose your objective wisely, formulate goals to meet that objectives, and use all your resources for the sole purpose of reaching it. Your success is measured by how close you are to meeting your objectives.