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Munchery is Eating the Restaurant



To all my fellow entrepreneurs here is one article you all should read; A case study of a fast growing brand... This is not magic it is what strategy can do for you... read well, understand and share
How would you measure the value of a company? Especially, a company that you started a month ago – how do you determine startup valuation? That is the question you will be asking yourself when you look for money for your company.

Let’s lay down the basics. Valuation is simply the value of a company. There are folks who make a career out of projecting valuations. Since most of the time you are valuing something that may or may not happen in the future, there is a lot of room for assumptions and educated guesses.


Why does startup valuation matter?

Valuation matters to entrepreneurs because it determines the share of the company they have to give away to an investor in exchange for money.  At the early stage the value of the company is close to zero, but the valuation has to be a lot higher than that. Why? Let’s say you are looking for a seed investment of around $100, 000 in exchange for about 10% of your company. Typical deal. Your pre-money valuation will be $ 1 million. This however, does not mean that your company is worth $1 million now. You probably could not sell it for that amount. Valuation at the early stages is a lot about the growth potential, as opposed to the present value.

How do you calculate your valuation at the early stages?

  1. Figure out how much money you need to grow to a point where you will show significant growth and raise the next round of investment. Let’s say that number is $100,000, to last you 18 months. Your investor does not have a lot of incentive to negotiate you down from this number. Why? Because you showed that this is the minimum amount you need to grow to the next stage. If you don’t get the money, you won’t grow – that is not in the investor’s interest. So let’s say the amount of the investment is set.

  2. Now we need to figure out how much of the company to give to the investor. It could not be anything more than 50% because that will leave you, the founder, with little incentive to work hard. Also, it could not be 40% because that will leave very little equity for investors in your next round. 30% would be reasonable if you are getting a large chunk of seed money. In this case you are looking for only $100, 000, a relatively small amount. So you will probably give away 5-20% of the company, depending on your valuation.

  3. As you see, $100,000 is set in stone. 5%-20% equity is also set. That puts the (pre-money) valuation somewhere between $500,000 (if you give away 20% of the company for $100,000) and $2 Million (if you give away 5% of the company for $100,000).

  4. Where in that range will it be? 1.That will depend on how other investors value similar companies. 2. How well you can convince the investor that you really will grow fast.


How to Determine Valuation?

Seed Stage

Early-stage valuation is commonly described as “an art rather than a science,” which is not helpful. Let’s make it more like a science. Let’s see what factors influence valuation.


Traction. Out of all things that you could possibly show an investor, traction is the number one thing that will convince them. The point of a company’s existence is to get users, and if the investor sees users – the proof is in the pudding.

So, how many users?

If all other things are not going in your favor, but you have 100,000 users, you have a good shot at raising $1M (that is assuming you got them within about 6-8 months). The faster you get them, the more they are worth.

Reputation. There is the kind of reputation that someone like Jeff Bezos has that would warrant a high valuation no matter what his next idea is. Entrepreneurs with prior exits in general also tend to get higher valuations. But some people received funding without traction and without significant prior success. Two examples come to mind. Kevin Systrom, founder of Instagram, raised his first $500k in a seed round based on a prototype, at the time called Brnb. Kevin worked at Google for two years, but other than that he had no major entrepreneurial success. Same story with Pinterest founder Ben Silbermann. In their cases, their respective VCs said they followed their intuition. As unhelpful a methodology as it is, if you can learn how to project the image of the person who gets it done, lack of traction and reputation will not prevent you from raising money at a high valuation.

Revenues. Revenues are more important for the B-to-B startups than consumer startups. Revenues make the company easier to value.


For consumer startups having a revenue might lower the valuation, even if temporarily. There is a good reason for it. If you are charging users, you are going to grow slower. Slow growth means less money over a longer period of time. Lower valuation. This might seem counter-intuitive because the existence of revenue means the startup is closer to actually making money. But startup are not only about making money, it is about growing fast while making money. If the growth is not fast, then we are looking at a traditional money-making business.

The last two will not give you an automatically high valuation, but they will help.

Distribution Channel: Even though your product might be in very early stages, you might already have a distribution channel for it. For example, you might have sold carpets door-to-door in a neighborhood where almost every resident works at a VC firm. Now you have a distribution channel targeting VCs. Or you might have run a Facebook page of cat photos with 12 million likes, now that page might become a distribution channel for your cat food product.

Hotness of industry. Investors travel in packs. If something is hot, they may pay a premium.


DO YOU NEED A HIGH VALUATION?

Not necessarily. When you get a high valuation for your seed round, for the next round you need a higher valuation. That means you need to grow a lot between the two rounds.


A rule a thumb would be that within 18 months you need to show that you grew ten times. If you don’t you either raise a “down round,” if someone wants to put more cash into a slow-growing business, usually at very unfavorable terms, or you run out of cash.

It comes down to two strategies.

  1. One is, go big or go home. Raise as much as possible at the highest valuation possible, spend all the money fast to grow as fast a possible. If it works you get a much higher valuation in the next round, so high in fact that your seed round can pay for itself. If a slower-growing startup will experience 55% dilution, the faster growing startup will only be diluted 30%. So you saved yourself the 25% that you spent in the seed round. Basically, you got free money and free investor advice.

  2. Raise as you go. Raise only that which you absolutely need. Spend as little as possible. Aim for a steady growth rate. There is nothing wrong with steadily growing your startup, and thus your valuation raising steadily. It might not get you in the news, but you will raise your next round.


SERIES A

The main metric here is growth. How much have you grown in the last 18 months? Growth means traction. It could also mean revenue. Usually, revenue does not grow if the user base does not grow ( since there is only so much you can charge your existing customers before you hit the limit).


Investors at this stage determine valuation using the multiple method, also called the comparable method, well-described by Fred Wilson. The idea is that there are companies out there similar enough to yours. Since at this stage you already have a revenue, to get your valuation all we need to do is find out how many times valuation is bigger than revenue – or in other words, what the multiple is. That multiple we can get from these comparable companies. Once we get the multiple, we multiply your revenue by it, which produces your valuation.


INVESTOR’S PERSPECTIVE

It is important to understand what the investor is thinking as you lay down on the table everything you have got.

  1. The first point they will think is the exit – how much can this company sell for, several years from now. I say sell because IPOs are very rare and it is nearly impossible to predict which companies will. Let’s be very optimistic and say that the investor thinks that, like Instagram, your company will sell for $1 Billion. (This is just an example. So do not get caught up in how unrealisict that is. This is still possible.)

  2. Next they will think how much total money it will take you to grow the company to the point that someone will buy it for $1 Billion. In Instagram’s case they received a total of 56 Million in funding. This helps us figure out how much the investor will make in the end. $1 Billion – $56= $ 940 million That is how much value the company created. Let’s assume that if there were any debts, they were already deducted, and the operational costs are taken out as well. So everyone involved in Instagram collectively made $940 Million on the day Facebook bought them.

  3. Next, the investor will figure out what percentage of that she owns. If she funded Instagram at the seed stage, let’s say 20%. (The complicated piece here is that she probably got preferred shares, which just means she gets the money before everyone else. Also, there might have been a convertible note as part of the funding, which gave her the option to buy shares later on at a set price, called “cap”.) Basically, all of these are just anti-dilution measures. The investor that funded you early on does not want to get diluted too much by the VCs who will come in later and buy 33% of your company. That’s all that is. Let’s assume in the end, like in How Startup Funding Works, the angel gets diluted to 4%. 4% of $940 million is $37.6 Million. Let’s say this was our best case scenario.

$37.6 Million is the most this investor thinks she can make on your startup.  If you raised $3 Million in exchange for 4% – that would give the investor a 10X returns, ten times their money. Now we are talking. Only about a 3rd of companies in top-tier VC firms make that kind of a return.


DOES THE VALUATION REALLY MATTER?

Consider two scenarios – Dropbox vs. Instagram.
Both Dropbox and Instagram started as a one-man show. Both of them were or are valued over $1 Billion. But they started with very different valuations:

  1. Drew Houston went to Y-Combinator, where he received about $20K in exchange for 5% of Dropbox. Valuation 400K (pre-money).

  2. Kevin Systrom went to Baseline Ventures and received $500k in exchange for about 20% of Brbn (predecessor of Instagram). Valuation $2.5M.
Why were the valuations so different? And, more importantly, did it matter in the end?


OTHER THINGS THAT INFLUENCE VALUATION

Option Pool. Option pool is nothing more than just stock set aside for future employees. Why do this? Because the investor and you want to make sure that there is enough incentive to attract talent to your startup. But how much do you set aside? Normally, the option pool is somewhere between 10-20%.


The bigger the option pool the lower the valuation of your startup. Why? Because option pool is value of your future employees, something you do not have yet. The options are set up so that they are granted to no one yet. And since they are carved out of the company, the value of the option pool is basically deducted from the valuation.


Here is how it works. Let’s say your pre-money valuation is $4M. One million is coming in new funding. Post money valuation is now $5M. The VC gives you a “term sheet” – which is just a contract that contains the conditions upon which the money is given to you, and which you can negotiate. The term sheet says that the VC wants a fully diluted 15% option pool in the pre-money valuation. This means that we need to take 15% of the $5 million (post-money valuation), which is $750, 000 and deduct it from the pre-money valuation ($4 million minus $750,000). Now the true valuation of our company is only $3.25 Million.
http://business.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-calculate-the-value-of-your-early-stage-startup--cms-65

https://www.equitynet.com/crowdfunding-tools/startup-valuation-calculator.aspx

http://fundersandfounders.com/how-startup-valuation-works/
Sources:


 Crowdfnding in Nigeria is still kind of new; I have spoken to numerous Nigerians asking them if they know anything about crowd funding from banks to academic institutions and many more; they just aren't familiar with the word. This article explains reasons why 
you should crowdfund your projects or ideas. 

 with new startups like FINOFUND for Nigerians, Nigerians now have the opportunity to take advantage of the crowdfunding opportunities in the country and contribute to creative ideas of many Nigerians...

 copied about.com/money: 
Crowdfunding (What is Crowdfunding?) is the biggest thing to happen to finance in the last decade. Entrepreneurs, small and large companies, and individuals are finding a new channel to fund their ideas, projects, and business online. Participating in crowdfunding isn't only about doing good-- it's about finding efficient ways to raise money by democratizing the risk and rewards by pooling tens, hundreds, and thousands of contributors/investors together to contribute in your project or invest in your company. With crowdfunding, the future of finance is here.

1.  Because other funding sources are drying up (Forbes)

"In the funding days of old (think three-four years ago), venture capitalists were throwing their money at companies with large user-bases without stopping to consider the plan (or lack thereof) for monetization. Businesses like Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram were lauded for their growing numbers and flashy design, but all eventually reached huge struggles with the need for profit. While they eventually did prove successful and figured out a way to monetize, startups copying their business model will not be given the same chances these days. Monetization has to be given higher priority nowadays.
Another contributing factor to this crunch is the ratio of seed stage funding and Series A investments. While they used to be leveled, there is now a staggering difference. Series A rounds have flat lined, while earlier funding rounds have flooded the market, leaving thousands of startups floundering for follow-up funding." 

2.  Immediately land customers (EliteDaily)

"The supporters of your crowdfunding campaign are your customers. Crowdfunding is basically a way to pre-order products before they are produced -- this is invaluable for a startup.  Too often, people produce products before knowing the depth of their customer base. Utilize crowdfunding so you have customers before your product is produced."

3.  Contributors can help you build your company (Forbes)

"To all the skeptics, I’d like to introduce a phenomenon that we at OurCrowd have named, crowdbuilding. Through our equity crowdfunding of over 30 startups in 2013, we’ve identified an interesting phenomenon: that the risk involved in startup investing incentivizes equity crowdfunding investors to get involved and assist their investments in any way they can. Ultimately, this personal involvement exposes these fledgling companies to a lot more then just 'dumb money.'"

4.  Conduct market research, build audience (Fullstart)

"Our Kickstarter campaign got a great response. In addition to covering the production costs of making an app, there were additional benefits we didn’t see coming. First, Kickstarter provided effective market research and publicity for us. We developed an audience that cares about our product, who can get others around them to be excited about it too."

5.  Participate in the world's incubation platform (Guardian)

"Crowdfunding is quickly becoming the world's incubation platform, changing the role of gatekeeper and finally giving the world true choice in determining which ideas come to life. Such meritocracy has never existed in the world of finance before. Thus, crowdfunding is changing finance for the better." 


6.  Create more equality and opportunity in emerging markets (McKinsey)

"By enabling crowdfund investing, governments in the region can harness the power of the social Web to provide more equal access to capital, reduce friction in the process of investment, and improve communication between investors and entrepreneurs. Because crowdfund investing platforms promise efficiency, transparency, and market validation, they can also be an appealing vehicle for individual and institutional investors, as well as public sector investment funds that focus on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)."

7.  Connect with a younger audience (NYTimes)

"Crowdfunding is particularly attractive to younger donors who are looking for a more direct connection to the causes and people they’re supporting,” said Katherina M. Rosqueta, executive director of the Center for High Impact Philanthropy at the University of Pennsylvania. “I think of it as a tool, one which might bring stories and issues to particular donors who wouldn’t otherwise be aware and prompt them to give." 

8.  Crowdfunding provides financing for public projects that lack funds (Slashdot)

"According to the BBC, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense has set up a way for people to donate small amounts of money via text message; in theory, the funds will go towards equipping Ukrainian troops. “The campaign has also been hijacked by Internet mischief-makers trying to trick Russians into messaging the same number,” reported the news service.
The Ukrainians aren’t alone in attempting to crowdfund public security services. In October 2013, citizens in Oakland, California started three campaigns to raise money for security patrols. Each of those campaigns, started on crowdfunding Website Crowdtilt, wanted between $20,000 and $25,000; dozens of people contributed. While upscale neighborhoods regularly pay for private security patrols, the Oakland scenario sparked a debate over whether crowdfunding could be used to pay for a broad range of municipal projects."

9.  Helping build small business ecosystems outside the U.S. (HuffPo)

"Equity crowdfunding is helping entrepreneurs market their companies and fundraising efforts in a new way and not just raise capital, but in many cases attract the attention of mentors, advisors and partners.
If you're an entrepreneur, investor or someone who wants to support local entrepreneurs then now is the time to get involved online by joining an equity crowdfunding platform and connect to your local community online."

10.  Screw the big banks (Economist)

"Peer-to-peer lending is growing fast in many countries. In Britain, loan volumes are doubling every six months. They have just passed the £1 billion mark ($1.7 billion), though this is tiny against the country’s £1.2 trillion in retail deposits. In America, the two largest P2P lenders, Lending Club and Prosper, have 98% of the market. They issued $2.4 billion in loans in 2013, up from $871m in 2012. The minnows are doing even better, though they are growing from a much lower base.
Neil Bindoff of PwC, a professional-services firm, speaks of a “perfect storm” supporting P2P’s growth. Interest rates are close to zero, the public is fed up with banks, costs are low (one third of a typical bank’s, according to Renaud Laplanche of Lending Club), and e-commerce is becoming part of daily life. People use the internet for peer-to-peer telephony (Skype) and shopping (eBay), so why not loans?"

So Nigerians, lets get funding and funded. check out finofund projects and find the one you would like to support.
cpoied:naijapreneur
Entrepreneurs advantage
 What’s the one thing that gives an entrepreneur the unfair advantage over others?
Time freedom.
The fact that you own 100% of your time is your greatest advantage as an entrepreneur.
While others have to give up their time in exchange for salary, entrepreneurs make use of their time to create products/services that makes them money. I’ve previously written about this; how entrepreneurs create wealth in their spare time.
For an employee, there’s a limit to their income potential because there’s a limit on their working hours. For an entrepreneur, you own and determine your working hours and also get to choose the activities to devote your time to.
However, knowing that you have this advantage is not going to automatically make you a successful entrepreneur. Having 100% ownership of your time is only the beginning, a greater part of success depends on how well you make use of this time and on what activities you engage in with this time freedom.
So what are those critical areas you absolutely need to be focusing the bulk of your time freedom on as an entrepreneur?

The Key To Unlocking The Entrepreneurial Advantage

I partially answered this question in a previous post about how entrepreneurs should be spending their time. I identified 5 highly effective activities that you can focus on as an entrepreneur; I referred to them as the 5Cs of time management for entrepreneurs.
So in a way, this is a follow up post to that article as I will be sharing 9 key drivers of business according to Jay Abraham that you need to devote your time on regularly.
But before we dive into these 9 key drivers of business, I want to quickly talk about the key to unlocking the entrepreneurial advantage in your business.
The key to unlocking the entrepreneurial advantage of time freedom is to focus it on building your business rather than doing business.
This distinction is very crucial and needs to be clarified, if you spend all of your time freedom doing business, you will eventually end up as a worn out self employee. Your business will further entrap you instead of freeing you. The bigger it grows, the tighter its grip on your time and eventually your life if you failed to focus on building rather than doing.
Here’s a previous post that sheds more light on the need to build rather than do business; the paradox of business. You should read it!

 

Jay Abraham’s 9 Drivers of Business for Unlocking The Entrepreneurial Advantage

There are obviously a million things you should be focusing on as an entrepreneur, but not all of them will give you high return on time invested. But the following 9 areas have been tested and have been found to generate the highest possible leverage for your business by one of the greatest business minds alive; Jay Abraham.
While these 9 drivers of business may not be foreign concepts to you, the underlying mindset here is to spend your time freedom on continually improving and fine tuning them. The keyword is improvement. This is essentially the crucial difference between building a business and just doing business.

1). Marketing

This is your number one priority as an entrepreneur because until you can consistently find, attract, convert and retain a profitable customer, you are not yet in business. You knew that already right?
But here’s the winning difference according to Jay Abraham;
“…if you can get people who were selling 1 out of 7 prospects to sell 1 out of 3. The sales leverage available to you is profound. If you can get sales letters that were pulling 0.5% to pull 4%…if you can people who were buying $250 to now buy $400…if you can get people who were buying once a year to buy once a quarter or once a month…if you can get people who weren’t referring anyone to you to start referring five new customers each a year…the combined effect of that kind of marketing leverage is exponential growth.
That’s exactly how you increase your business, your revenue, your sales, your profits, your wealth, and your net worth by factors of ten times or more. That really is.”
But how do you improve on your marketing to unlock this unfair advantage in your business?
Again, according to Jay Abraham, the answer is pretty simple;
“First thing you do is you do an internal marketing audit and inventory. You identify all the marketing activities, processes, and elements going on and then you start looking at the best performing ways to improve upon it. How do you find them?
There are three approaches:
  • Look within your organization and see who else does what you want to do better. Model, codify and replicate the highest performing people in your company doing various selling or marketing processes. And get everyone else in the organization to start applying it or adding its best elements to their previous method.
  • Go outside your company. Look at other enterprises in the same field outside your market (or even in your market) that have better ways of marketing, of selling, of lead generating, of conversion, of re-selling and of up-selling¾and borrow their success processes.
  • Go outside your industry, to related industries, and look at their best practices. Look at the spectrum of opportunities out there that other people have found, uncovered, discovered, refined and are using each and every day with massive success¾to either identify prospects, sell direct, run ads that pull great response, make better sales presentations, get appointments, or attract people to trade shows.
Then borrow, adapt, adopt, and directly funnel and apply those processes and approaches to your business and start doing this exercise as a regular on-going process in which you measure, monitor, analyze, quantify and figure out how many different things you can add to your current success approach by either adding new additional elements or replacing the underperforming ones that are not justifying their time, their effort, their opportunity cost or their existence.”

2). Strategy

Marketing without strategy, according to small business guru, John Jantsch of Duct Tape marketing, is the noise before failure.
Here’s how Jay Abraham defined it;
“Strategy is the master purpose your business is all about. It’s different than your business model. Strategy is literally the explanation of the entire operating approach your business is following and why and how every element of it integrates, advances and deploys the big picture outcome that you’re after.”

But how do you improve on your strategy to unlock this unfair advantage in your business?
Jay Abraham identified 3 key steps you need to take;
“1.) The first thing is by understanding that you do have strategy you are currently following even if it’s a reactive one. You’ve got to adopt, first and foremost, a proactive long-term strategy.
2.) You’ve got to figure out what it is you’re trying to do, accomplish, build and sustain with your business.
3.) You’ve got to figure what big operating approach will get you the greatest outcome you want in the fastest period of time on the most sustaining and enduring basis. Once you figure that out then you’ve got to think through your tactics.
These are the actions or vehicles that help deliver the strategic result you’re after. What actions, what activities, what concepts, what approaches will deploy your “big picture” strategy best. Meaning what are the best moves and maneuvers to achieve the big outcome you are after.”
For more tips on strategic marketing, read this unusual article; The Idiot’s Guide To Strategic Marketing.

3). Capital

I’m sure the first thing that came into your mind as soon as you saw capital was money, right? Well you are half right, but that’s not the only capital we are referring to here.
According to Jay Abraham; capital also includes your human capital, your intellectual capital, and yes, your financial capital.
  • Human Capital:
These are basically the people working for you. If you can get everybody performing higher you’ve got incredible leverage. How do you do it?
Training.
Every dollar you spend in training will produce 20-200 times return annually in yield. So, do you train your people? If so how often or frequently?
  • Intellectual Capital:
This is one of the hardest things for any competition to copy in business. It refers to the sum of all the knowledge, skill, talent and experiences of all the people in your company. So what do you all have between your ears?
  • Financial Capital:
Are you questioning the yield you’re getting on the money you’re spending¾on the people you’re paying (both staff or contract services), on your marketing expenditures, inventory and technical services? It all ties in.
It’s your responsibility to question the capital expenditures you’re making and the ROI (Return on Investment), the ROE (Return on Effort), the ROP (Return on People), the ROA (Return on Activity), and the ROO (Return on Opportunity).

4). Business model

The business model is different from strategy. It’s basically the means you’re using to affect or achieve your strategy. It’s different than tactics. The model is the whole integrated approach.
The business model you follow can make all the difference in your profitability and there’s enormous leverage here because you can change one element and it could change everything.
Here’s an example by Jay Abraham;
“Let’s say that your business, basically, is a one-shot business. And your business model is you advertise or direct mail market to get leads. You convert them to a one-time sale. You do nothing else with them after they buy or even if they didn’t buy and that’s your business model.
Well, if you added one more dimension to it, after the people that didn’t buy from you and you figured out how to do something else with them for other products and services that are complementary to the need they came to you originally to help them solve or fill. And for the people that do buy, you figure out how to sell them other people’s products or services afterwards. You’ve just added two new dimensions, elements, or layers to your business model and that simple shift in thinking could triple or quadruple your profit.”

5). Relationships

As an entrepreneur, time spent developing your professional network is a huge opportunity for potential growth.
According to Jay Abraham, these are the different sources of relationships available to entrepreneurs;
  • Business Relationships: people you met during the course of doing business; clients, suppliers, employees, partners, etc.
  • Professional Relationships: people in the same field as yourself; colleagues,
  • Collegial Relationships: people you attended school with; course mates, school mates, etc.
  • Mastermind Relationships: brilliant minds, mentors, business coaches, fellow entrepreneurs, you brainstorm together.
So what do you do with these relationships?
Jay Abraham says;
“If I were you and I had relationships in any kind of other business in any field of endeavor, I’d tap into it regularly. Anybody who, knowingly or otherwise, could be a vessel for you to gain greater expanded understanding or hone in on better performing approaches, strategies, etc., I would first and foremost start picking their minds.
I’d ask them questions. I’d tell them your problems. I’d tell them your goals. I’d ask them questions of whatever their area of skill was, what the highest performing thing they did to accept or solve the issue or objective you’re intent in learning about, what was the secret to be successful at it, what they saw, find out what their company or their employer or their industry did best that you don’t do well and learn how to improve from the discussion.
I’d ask them a myriad of questions that would expand my knowledge base proficiency and perspective. I’d write them down. I would record them. I’d add it all to my current operating system. I would keep borrowing the success processes I learned from these activities, from all kinds of different people I know, and apply them to my business opportunities or challenges.”

 

6). Distribution channels

These are the various means through which your products/services get into the hands of your target customers.
According to Jay Abraham;
“You have a number of unrecognized distribution channels you don’t fully maximize and there’s enormous leverage in them. For example, let’s say that you distribute your product through five hundred retailers. Well, that is a distribution outlet for all kinds of other products.”
By spending more time to maximize the value of your distribution channels, you open up your business for more growth. For example, if you are a retailer with a physical outlet and you decide to take your business online through eCommerce, your capacity to sell to more customers will be significantly maximized.
There are basically two ways of leveraging your distribution channels;
  • Increase your distribution channels: this is quite obvious, just like the example above. If you have only one distribution channel, adding more will increase your company’s capacity to grow.
  • Offer more products through your existing distribution channels: this is less obvious, and if well executed can increase your company’s growth potential with less investment on your part. Here’s a fantastic case study from Jay Abraham;
“We had a company that had two products in the athletic clothing field. They were doing about $2 million and making half a million in profit. They came to me because their products were starting to slow down. They wanted me to give them a breakthrough idea. I looked at their business and I saw that their real assets weren’t their two products. They had accounts with 5,000 retailers. Amongst them all were Nordstrom’s, K-Mart, Target, JC Penney and Parkway and Hosiery.
I showed them that all they had to do was secure the rights to other people’s athletic products then give those people a royalty for their clothes design, start having those products manufactured for my client, put their licensed products through the same distribution pipeline and they’d make ten times as much selling these other products through their distribution channel as they did from their main products. They did it and I was right. They made a fortune.”

7). Products and services

How many other places could you take your existing product, service or combinations or variations of them and apply it to other fields or other regions or buying groups. Or could you license other people to use it?
Could you package it in different ways sizes or combinations? Could you package other people’s things with it? Could you package your products or processes and make that a product or service? How many new products or services could you come out with that are your natural extensions, embellishments, top of the line premium versions, higher performing versions, or stripped down white label versions? Just by adding one or two or five different components you can create an entire new product and penetrate new market niches.

8). System

Every business mechanism can be broken down into its driving processes and sub processes. Once you figure out what the processes driving an activity are, they can be measured, they can be quantified, and they can be vastly improved.
When you figure out how your given processes currently perform, (which is nothing more than a function of analysis, monitoring and measurement), you can then find other people in your organization or other people in your industry or other people doing the same function outside the industry who are doing it much better, faster, easier, safer, more productive, more effective, more profitably. Then simply adopt it to your business.

9). Ideology

If you’re very introspective and you’re anti-social, you’re not going to be able to go and build mastermind groups and pick people’s minds and borrow success processes. If your ideology is: You only like what you like; you’re not going to be able to travel outside your comfort zone and study other people, other business philosophies, other mindsets, other ideologies.
You’ve got to figure out what your ideology is, what your belief system is, what your whole value system is and how it either helps or hampers your current business activities. Then it needs to either be strengthened and fortified and connected to and or replaced, based on your current business model and your strategy.
You also need to study other people’s ideology to compare how yours is better, different or worse and what elements of other’s you can borrow and add and what elements of yours you could teach to others. When you do that, you’re going to expand your capability and your sense of what’s possible.

Conclusion

The entrepreneurial advantage is time freedom and the key to unlocking it is focusing on building rather than doing business. We’ve identified 9 key drivers of business according to Jay Abraham that can help you fully maximize the entrepreneurial advantage of time freedom at your disposal.
- See more at: http://www.naijapreneur.com/entrepreneurial-advantage/#sthash.W92w9M5w.dpuf

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;Proudly social I am a New School; A young budding creative and innovative business developer, social entrepreneur and free lance blogger. Co-owner RIcci's, co founder Finofund.com; Belief the unbelievable, as your level of success is determined by your ability to belief in what common people perceive as unbelievable" "The word impossible comes from the word possible which reads ' I'm possible '

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