I have been doing business with a foreign firm owned by a youthful gentleman for two years and I had no complaints about the quality of services.
Having been introduced to the supplier by a friend and having seen their quality of service and list of happy clients, I thought I was dealing with a big firm. I did not dig deep into the company history or operations.
Recently another prospective supplier and a competitor from the same country came looking for business. During our meeting he told me something very interesting – that all along I had been dealing with a broker with no credible assets or factory.
He boasted that he has decades-old factory with the state of the art machines while my supplier relied purely on getting business and selling it to firms with factory for a commission.
The guy proved to me that my supplier was a broker. I did my own investigation and I found it was indeed true that my youthful supplier did not have his own factory and relied on outsourcing services from establishing firms.
However, one thing impressed me – he always delivered quality services at reasonable price.
When I asked the guy to give me a quote, he could not offer me any reasonable price advantage over the alleged ‘broker’.
Finally, I made up my mind. I don’t care whether one is a business owner with a trillion asset base or a broker. I care about the service delivery.
As I reflected on this case, I lamented on the many firms and individuals today that are captive of the mentality that to own business you need huge sums of money in capital to buy assets, establish state of the art offices in order to succeed in business.
We are living in a golden age when technology is disrupting the old model of doing business and providing monumental opportunities to start and do business on its wings. I agree that capital to start business is a major hindrance to many would-be entrepreneurs but I insists that it is overly exaggerated.
Perhaps you don’t need as much capital as you think to start your dream business. You only need to be creative and think outside the box.
Take for example Uber and Airbnb, some of the most successful disruptive businesses in the world today. Globally, they make handsome profit and control a huge business empire with trillions worthy of asset that does not belong to them.
They have proven that to do an accommodation business you need not own property or own vehicles to make money from transport business.
For you to succeed in modern day technology-driven business you must shift your mindset from the traditional business models. You must study the gaps in the traditional business that can be met by technology and move with speed to fill them.
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