Starting Where You Are And With What You Have

Everyone of us know what the banks can do to be better, more globally relevant and make more profit. Everyone of us know what Mr J should do to improve his business. We all have these wonderful ideas that will work wonders for any business. The only problem is that we only think in terms of other people's business. We would rather passively offer our ideas or sell them to someone else that use them ourselves. We would rather improve another man's business than start our own.

The problem is we are too scared to start with what we have and from where we are. 

We would rather express our anger about how the government has made business registration unduly complex and expensive, about how office space is crazy expensive in Lagos, about how getting external fund is almost impossible and about how starting the kind of business we want is impossible under the current circumstances.

We don't want to start where we are and with what we have. We have forgotten that there is a learning curve to everything. Rome wasn't built in a day just because the bricks that had to be laid were so many that it required thousands of people and years, but also because the plans kept changing/updated. Take the roads they built as an example, they would rather choose another path for their long straight roads than have a curvy road. So a lot of that many years went into planning, learning from mistakes and going slowly. 

When you see a very tall building. Maybe a skyscraper, No matter the construction company used to build it, the beginning would always be very slow. You would see people working hard everyday and not see any much difference on the construction site; then after a few months you will suddenly see a see a structure that is growing overnight. The construction process can be put into three distinct phases:

1. The slow beginning when they are digging the foundation and working underground,
2. The steep acceleration when they start putting up the building's walls, and
3. The plateau when it's now internal furnishing and some less obvious works.

And it's like that for all reasonable human endeavour. Especially running a business. The steep acceleration ideas you have are not going to get you anywhere if you won't face the pain of a slow beginning and working with dirt. 

You have to start where you are and with what you have. It's the only way things get done and dreams get achieved.