Business: Have Crumbs For Breakfast Before Going For The Giant’s Lunch

The path to success is replete with the daunting fear of uncertainty; only the optimist travels this path to the end, the pessimist accepts the realities of uncertainty and discounts his chances to succeed. For you to succeed, you have to dream big, design lofty and great  ideas. “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”- Eleanor Roosevelt. As is the empirical truth, “success is born out of great dreams.” John F Kennedy dreamt to have an American on the moon, Nelson Mandela dreamt of freeing south Africa from the dehumanizing apartheid regime, Barack Obama dreamt of becoming the first black president of the United States of America, these dreams came to pass.

Dream big, but first, “Have crumbs for breakfast before going for the giant’s lunch.” Start small, because a lofty idea requires lofty execution style, at least to achieve desirable results. You don’t want to rent an office space and hire employees, all it does is service your ego. We have seen how big corporation started out in parking garage. Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, started the company in the year 1994 from his garage. Today it’s the world’s largest

online retailer. In 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, started Apple and their small team hand-built 50 computers in 30 days from a garage in Cupertino, CA. The list goes on.  Jeff Bezos did not start by trying to create Amazon, as well as the Jobs with Apple, rather, Jeff Bezos started by creating an online bookshop and the Job’s a computer. Remember, every large company was once a start-up. Start small, if not for any reason, the experience garnered would come handy when you finally execute the great idea, besides, if you are not fully prepared before going for the giant’s lunch, the giant may likely have you for lunch. Disconnect from dream land today and start small, take advantage of the availability of the internet. Start up your business today and publicize on social media, before the actual kick-off. Stop all the unproductive chats and turn your social media accounts to your start-off point. Most successes we celebrate today started small.

Barack Obama worked as a community organizer in Chicago from 1985-1988, by way of responding to an ad published to seek for a black community organizer. On February 6, 1990, he became the first black president of the Harvard law review. Mark Zurcherbeg CEO and founder of Facebook developed “Synapes” – a music recommended system; “Wirehog” a peer- to- peer client, while at Harvard, he created “Facemash” a website that compared students dom photos, before he created “Facebook” A reason why crumbs for breakfast is necessary is that it doesn’t require half the hassle needed in trying to get the giant’s lunch. It provides you the comfort to achieve success at your level. What is important is, the success recorded, success at this level is the requisite for the bigger success.

Another context to having crumbs for breakfast, is the rule of contracting. Contracting is restructuring your idea from that encompassing one, to that, with a seemingly none exiting market. Contract to the extent of creating a new category and take the lead. While crumbs to you is so small, it might be your path to starting a new brand category. You don’t want to build a social media platform like “Facebook” or “Twitter” You have to contract that idea, make it narrower in scope, once the category is built, you become the leader in that category, invariable, you will have the “Giant lunch.” Most start ups want to do everything at the same time, in Nigeria, they ignorantly register their company, with the title “General Contractor”. The mind set is that the broader their scope the better the possibility for them to always be in business. No wonder there is hardly any solid brand in our clime. In other climes, there is for example “Victoria secretes” who designs lingerie. It is better to start small,be unique than start big and be a jack of all trades and master of none. Contracting is key to having the long lasting success you desire. “If cannot do great things, do small things in a great way” Napoleon Hill. Remember, every successful company, was once a startup.

Odili Chukwudi

http://fastflexer.blogspot.com