When response to your idea is negative, by Ola Emmanuel

Chris is the co-founder of the retail brand named: “‘UNTUCKit.” His dream was to start his own business and all he needed was an idea. From 2003 to 2010, he worked his way through multiple ideas and a few small ventures while still keeping his paid employment. After several attempts, he came up with an idea selling men’s shirts with shorter tails, specifically designed to be worn untucked.

He believed it was an idea that every man would understand, and a set of products he could market online.

But Investors he and his friend met declined. They rubbished the idea entirely, with statements like: “‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” and the sampled potential customers didn’t’t think it would ever be a good fashion statement. Not only did the investors hate the idea, but they also hated the name, UNTUCKit.

However, in 10 years of hard work, Chris’s business idea had sold eight million units of the untucked shirts and have 88 physical stores (81 in the USA, four in Canada and three in the UK). By the time Chris resigned from his paid job, the company was already running at a level of more than $20 million.

You must bear in mind that whatever you choose to pursue is about your life, and you owe it a duty to make the final decision: the buck stops on your table. Having subjected your idea to critical analysis and examine the pros and the cons, the merits and the demerits, the positives and negatives, the advantages and the disadvantages, the pluses and minuses associated with the business idea (or passion) which you want to turn to profits, what next should you do if you want to forge ahead with your vision but no one believes in you and the idea? Know that every successful start-up is a true definition and a story of acting against fear. This is Courage demonstrated. The entrepreneurs behind the successful businesses pledge to follow their passion with great resolve, despite challenges that confront them.

But these entrepreneurs first develop capacity to see through their peculiar challenges because they are self-driven, self-motivated and passionate to make huge difference with their ideas. When no one believes in your idea, you must ask yourself:  ‘to what extent you want to do something for yourself and how long you want to keep waiting for the right time’. You must deal with your fear of failure. To overcome fear, you need to swing into action with your idea. Don’t make yourself a victim of ‘have you ever seen it work before’ syndrome.  Don’t be a follower of environmental or social ills.

Once you are able to get your business concept right, write it down (business plan) and launch out with courage to execute your intentions in well thought-out action plan. You must understand that to achieve anything in life, you can’t get 100 per cent green light, and it is not possible to discover all challenges before you start. As you move forward, each day will throw up new peculiarities and then you think of the way out.

Because of ‘fear of tomorrow’, majority of people that surround you love to live in their comfort zones. But they forget that nothing ever grow in comfort. For you to achieve your business goal, you must leave your comfort zone, sharpen your countenance and pursue with the countenance of a ‘toughie’. You must prove that you are not a soft thing with a snail’s attitude.

As an entrepreneur, you must be very visionary. You must possess the ability to create a world that doesn’t exist in your mind and begin to work hard to see it established. You have a business idea, a life goal, or a dream that you want to pursue, you have to get it right by yourself.

. Emmanuel is a business planning and cooperative consultant. He works with a team of international consultants to conceptualise and plan agribusiness and housing projects. As a certified trainer authorised to use the International Labour Organisation’s enterprise development modules, he trains entrepreneurs and organises workshops and seminars for potential and practising entrepreneurs as well as business managers and cooperatives. He also speaks and facilitates at leadership and management workshops on invitation. His book, Business Planning Made Easy: Step by Step Guide On How To Turn Your Idea To Profitable Business’ is the latest of the books authored by him. Tel: +234(0)9068602954 (call and sms), +234(0)8023257707 (WhatsApp only).