13 Lessons From My Experience Partnering With Someone in a Business Venture During COVID 19

"During the 1950s, Aristotle Onassis and I formed what grew to be a close friendship and association in several business ventures" - J Paul Getty

Ever since the Lockdown began. I kept telling my neighbor that he needed to revive a business he used to do. His business was in supplying Pork to people within and outside our estate. He has farming experience so some of these things really come naturally to him. So as we kept talking during this time, we realized that this is a great opportunity and it must be seized and other categories of meats(Goat, Chicken, etc.) could be added there was time and the idea had to be worked on.

I kept telling him that he needed to revive the delivery of Pork. Then just like a blast of a bomb Booooom!! One day, he calls me and says, "Arthur, I need to start this thing", Are you in? and I am like "I am in", I needed to put in a percentage of money that would enable us to procure the orders from the clientele within our community.

It is now a month and some days since we started this thing and these are the lessons I have so far learned in this journey 

"Too much talk won't do the work, actualizing the idea by making clear cut and concrete decisions on when and how to start the venture is important, and in that the key thing is to begin". I promised him to design flyers but I saw that I was delaying and I told him you know what, the design will come later, just start posting the messages.

1. Do The Market Research

"I love marker research because you really have an idea what consumers are looking for" - Aerin Lauder

"We don't believe in market research for a new product unknown to the public, so we never do any" - Akio Morita

One of the key things we were looking at was an everyday service and also stemmed from the fact that we ourselves were looking for the same service and hoping that someone could start it. However, we said why can't we do this? that's when we started talking more and engaging in different modalities.

We had already done market research and one of the challenges was finding a butcher service. Since the places that we could easily get good choice meat were like 3-4kms away, meeting this need was of great importance because we would be filling that gap and providing the much-needed service.

2. Have a Clear Need You Are Meeting

"Every moment each human being is doing the best we know at that moment to meet our needs. We never do anything that is not in the service of a need, there is no conflict on our planet at the level of needs. We all have the same needs. The problem is in strategies for meeting the needs." - Marshall B. Rosenberg

Just like this powerful quote from Marshall Rosenberg suggests. Is that we should never do anything that is not in the service of a need. So realizing the need around the community with the challenges of the Lockdown reinforced the idea of starting this venture. 

Yours truly would ride to Najjera, Wakiso District to buy his favorite meat from one of the butchers. There is a family that badly wanted to eat meat and I told them when I ride to my butcher, then I could go buy them so. 

3. Test The Market

"The gap between what is expected and what you deliver is where the magic happens, in business and in life" - Jay Baer, Founder of Convince and Convert

One of the good things we were banking on was the fact that the market was already tested. But it was such a long time and still, the good news is some of the old clients kept asking when deliveries would start again. We were cognizant of the fact that we would get new clients and also get new feedback which has indeed happened, most of the feedback has been good but we have also had some shoot down moments, where a client says they did not like this or that but those comments were necessary for our improvement.

4. Gather the Finances You Need

"My philosophy is that If I have any money, I invest it in new ventures and not have it sitting around" - Richard Branson

When it came to the money part. One of the most important things is that the first currency we had was the agreement to work on this venture. We also had and continue to have the emotional tenacity and the will to release the monies we had sitting around. We agreed on how much we would bring for the first partnership. From the first day this venture kicked off, after making profits, we have found ourselves re-investing the capital back and even more.

To be continued...

5. Always re-invest the Capital

#Transform #Impact #Empower