This document provides guidance on developing a business plan to convert ideas into a business. It recommends: 1. Creating a business plan to think through your business ideas and gather important facts. The plan will reveal your knowledge and help fine-tune your product for customers. 2. Including key elements in the plan like your value proposition, revenue model, competitive environment, competitive advantages, marketing strategy, organization details, management team, fundraising strategy, and shareholders agreement. 3. Conducting market research like creating customer profiles and surveys to deeply understand customers' needs and pain points. The research will help design a product that customers will value.

1. How to Convert Your Ideas
to Business
By
Opeyemi Praise

2. How do you convert your ideas to
business?
 Business Plan!
 Your Business Plan is the first manifestation of your ideas in the physical realm..
Take it seriously.
 Mediocrity is thinking it is not important to have a business plan before you do
business.
 Business Plan helps you to think through your business and gather important facts.
No matter what your business is about you need a plan!

3. The Business Plan will Reveal Your
Ignorance and/or Knowledge
 It will reveal if you actually have enough knowledge about the new territory
 Understudy the industry you want to start a business;
 Understudy the current players (your competitors) in the industry
 List thee current players and understudy their operations.. Day-to-day operations,
you have a lot to learn from that.
 Ask question – what is the cash flow? Who are the major clients? Where are they
failing? Who are the customers? How do they pay?
 Sure, your business plan will make you ask questions? Find answers to those
questions.
 In finding answers to the questions, you will acquire so much knowledge and skills.

4. The Business Plan will help you re-
design/fine-tune your product/service
 You will know more about your customers if you did a good job on your business
plan; what you know about the customers will help to fine-tune your product.
 Good selling product is usually customer-centric. We are in generation where
customers are very knowledgeable and they demand so much.
 Your product should be customer-centric! So you need to know the customer!
 Don’t build a product that’s good, build a product that’s great!

5. One by one Content of the Business Plan
Lets go through what needs to be in your business
plan!

6. Value Proposition
 What value are your bringing to all stakeholders.
 The king stakeholder is the Customer.
 What values would your product give to customers?
 What values would your product give to investor?
 What values would your product give to society?
 What values would your product give to employees?

7. Revenue Model
 How will you get revenue? How will you make profit?
 How will you price your product?
 What payment method best-suite your business?
 Do a scan of the industry for ideas or find the pricing of the closest industry to
yours if it is a fresh idea/new innovation.
 Example: we understudied DealDey, Jovago etc.
 You need to know the way money comes to your business based on the type of
business;
 A. Low Volume, High Margin Business – Construction, Real Estate,
 B. High Volume, Low Margin Business – e-Commerce, Oil Retailing,

8. Competitive Environment
 Who determines how much you charge on your product/service?
 There is no strategy outside your competitors; you must know your competitors
well and find strategy to crack a niche for yourself!
 Who are your competitors? Even if it is a new idea/innovation, your competitor
maybe old ways of doing things.
 Answer the question, what options do people have if they wouldn’t subscribe to my
service?
 What are your competitors’ competitive advantages? How can you crack them and
create a niche for yourself?

9. Competitive Advantage
 What advantage do you have over your competitor? This might location, new
innovation, cost/pricing, quality, expatriate, superior materials, new machine, new
processes, speed, could be anything. Like same cake example;
 I saw some videos on the internet and I see that cake making has really moved on.
If someone gets hold of this new way of making cake, he/she will probably do a lot
better than the guys currently their doing it the old way.

10. Marketing Strategy/Market Research
 Most of the work of the business plan is on knowing the market!
 We will get back to this in good time! Soon! Just hang-on!

11. Organization Development
 How do you intend to build your team?
 What work environment or structure would you want in your start-up?
 What workplace culture would you want?
 How would you recruit/what model of recruitment- recruit young/fresh grad as
intern and groom them? Recruit experienced?
 Work remotely or at your office?
 How much do you intend to pay your staff etc. You might project this – say, first 1-
2 years, outsource staff, 2-5 years full staff etc.

12. Management Team
 who and who would you want on board?
 Would the start-up involve skill-set you don’t have?
 How would you engage people you are bringing on board – as employee,
contractors, partners?
 Does your work involve legal stuffs, then you might need a lawyer on board. Etc.
 The scope of this project does not cover ‘How to choose a partner’.
 But one word on choosing partners; consider core values and ease of working
together than any other things (skill-set, moneybags, church member, etc)

13. Raising Funds
 Personal Savings – the initiative always gets its investment first from you. In fact,
nobody will invest into your idea until they see how much you have invested in it.
 Family friends and well-wishers – it still works especially because we are favoured.
 Strategic partners - partner with guys who have money and would invest in good ideas.
There are lots of people who have millions in their saving account; they are not doing
any projects with them.
 Banks – bank interest rates are killing but CBN has mandated them to have SME funds.
If you have strong business plan you will get some.
 Traditional sources – Incubators – Commercial banks – Angel investors – Venture capital
firms
 Crowdfunding

14. Shareholders Agreement
 It is not part of the business plan; but I feel it is worthy of mention.
 Shareholders Agreement is a legal document that addresses the stakes, role of
each shareholder with the view to keeping the business alive and prospering.
Consult a lawyer but be very involved as you will bound by it.
 Conflict may happen anytime; the fact that everybody is happy now does not mean
issue might not come-up.

15. Shareholders Agreement
 Content of Shareholders Agreement is as below, amongst other things;
 Equity share of each shareholders what percentage of the profit/loss will each
shareholder have.
 How to dilute the share?
 What is the rights and role of each shareholder especially those that will be involved in
the operations of the business.
 What percentage of the returns is plunge back into the business before shareholders
get their dividends?
 At what maturity (could be measured in revenue, returns/profit, age of the business etc)
of the business will shareholder begin to have returns?
 Don’t say because you have a good relationship with your shareholders now there won’t
be issues later.
 Shareholders agreement are confidential.

16. Market Strategy
 Don’t be overly impressed by the grammar!
 Create End User Profile (Persona) - An end-user profile is a description of a
narrowly defined subset of end-users with similar characteristics, similar needs, and
word-of-mouth.
 End User Profile will consist of:
 1. Demographic
 2. Motivation
 3. Behaviour

17. Market Strategy
 Demographic should reveal:
 1. Age Range
 2. Gender
 3. Geographical Area
 4. Income Range
 Motivation should talk about:
 1. What motivates them?
 2. What do they fear the most in the world?
 3. Religious beliefs, superstitions, biases etc

18. Market Strategy
 Behaviour should answer the questions?
 1. Where do they go for dinner?
 2. Where do they go before work?
 3. What newspapers do they read?
 4. What websites?
 5. What TV shows do they watch?
 6. Where do they go for leisure?

19. Market Strategy
 Also answer the questions:
 1. Common Problem (Pain Points)s that the End Users are Facing and your Problem
Solves
 2. What class or profile of people patronise your competitors?
 3. Find lead customers that you will satisfy so they can in-turn give your referrals.

20. Market Survey
 Do your market survey. Get specific information from your potential end user; if
you have a template it is better. Let them observe the template/sample product.
Welcome feedback; good or bad. Don’t be emotional about it (especially ladies)
when they tell you a particular thing is missing in your product.
 From experience, people who tell you what you need to work-on on your product
really want the best. Engage them more. Find out why and what they saw.
 People who just say all the good things, most time, I mean most time, just want
you to feel good. They can help you improvement endeavour.

21. Give Expression to Your Business Plan in
this Realm; it will help pray and know what
Areas in the Plan to Pray about More!

22. Thank You…