How to build an empire of paying customers

Is running your own business your big dream? Do you have a business you are currently running? Maybe the question should be “why should you own a business?

Business owners and entrepreneurs are gradually becoming the largest employer of labour. The fact is, the more, the merrier when you learn that they contribute more to the GDP of some countries than Government IGR’s.

Forward-thinking leaders are now recognizing this powerful force. They are encouraging the growth of SMEs by creating world-class infrastructures, foundational social amenities, and protective policies. This could be in the form of making SMEs non-taxable until they declare a profit, ease business transactions by providing no-interest loans, etc.

These and many other laudable government initiatives do possess ripple effects on the economy. More people would be positively engaged, poverty level would be reduced, and consequently, the standard of living would be increased. On the flip side, theft, kidnapping, pipe bunkering, prostitution, and other social vices would be on the downward trend.

Let’s be factual, creating a business is an entirely different beast compared to the fiery beast of maintaining the business. Many new business ideas are DOA (dead on arrival). Just watch as many YouTube videos as possible on SharkTank to understand what I mean. They do not thrive past the first 18 months of existence. Some do not go past the first five years of existence. Look around, how many businesses started two years ago and are still in existence today?

I would be making an entirely different post on how to generate business ideas that would thrive.

But let’s face the fact, the number one pain in the ass for every business owner is to get paying customers. A typical business owner would start his first sale by engaging his family, friends, and acquaintances and later scale up to acquiring some tens, hundreds, thousands, and millions of paying customers.

While this is simple theoretically, why do businesses still collapse before their fifth-year anniversary?  You know why? They exhausted their lists of friends and family. They find it hard to scale up. They eventually fade off when over-head cost cuts deeper. Some might be lucky to liquidate while others leave resources worth a fortune to rot away to seek greener pastures.

Grand entrepreneurs like Eric Ries, Grant Cardone, Brandon Burchard, Tony Robbins have developed formulae to convert ideas and get paying customers. It is just that the blue ocean of entrepreneurship is getting muckier than ever before.

That makes it more interesting, isn’t it? Entrepreneurship is not for the faint-hearted! Here are three steps to conquer build an empire of paying customers

• Embrace the gaming attitude

When we think of gamers, we imagine a bunch of teens and adults wasting their lives trying to skill up and defeat surreal monsters, fun catchers, and people who do not care about real-life problems.

This might be entirely a false mindset especially when you take another angle of viewing the gamers’ mind. We gamers are a set of individuals that would sacrifice our nights, and resources to improve ourselves. We want to upgrade our skill, our arsenal. Our gratification lies in becoming monsters, slaying heroes, holding the highest score, and becoming grand Masters. We want our fans, our peers to keep talking about us, praise us, and sing about us to others.

How do you differ? When all you want as a business owner is an army of fans, a tribe as it is now called. People who want more of you. They want to go overboard for you, sing about you. They want to be associated with a top gamer, a big gun.

Made in Aba shoes have Nike logo inscribed on it, made in Abeokuta Adire now have made in Italy printed upon them, the local hair salon has images. Now you know why! No one wants to be associated with an upcoming artist.

• Use a recognizable medium to communicate

When you provide enormous value to customers, they would soon take you as an essential need in their lives. Big organizations do hack this process probably because they have the funds to roll around. They want customers to talk about them more. They work day and night like gamers to speak the language of their customers, see how other gamers are improving and try to be ahead. They have a whole department dedicated to CSR’s (Community Social Responsibilities).

In the last world cup, #issagoal is the top music and Coca-cola quickly used it to communicate with its audience. Now it is the #gbeBodie.

Different brands implement different tactics to connect to their customers and be where their customers are.

• Start small, think big!

Simple, Eric Ries sums it all. All you need is an MVP (Minimum Viable Product). Do not build anything super yet but have long term plans that would be shaped by customers’ demand. Don’t feel too big to discard ideas, we do incur sunk cost. Google also dropped big ideas like Google plus.

With your MVP, go to where your customers are, let them see it, feel it, and connect with them in their language.

With this, your business will surely have a long-lasting gameful life.