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The three ways you can miss an opportunities can be that you are uninformed, misinformed or careless. In my views currently, I can say I have been careless. Growing up in a country where everything is tailored to politics can be very annoying. Empowerment programs will sprout up, data will be collected and it will later die off.
You should understand these government tactics especially when the election season is drawing near. It in the process makes the one that will find legitness difficult to spot. To even add to that, beating the inhouse to be a partaker of that opportunity is also another nut to crack.
Anyway, it seems this mentality is gradually fading as the new governorship system within the states is making an effort to liberate both individuals and households, especially citizens of the state.
I got such information last year about an empowerment program for SMEs within the states. I never took it that serious until I was told that some people got some grants to help start or push up from where they are. It might not have been that huge an amount but when considering how much you would have to pay assuming you were to get such loans from banks.
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I talked about this last week, how loanees are putting up this public complaint that loan apps/banks are charging excessive interest for loans that span even for a very short period of time.
This makes it difficult especially for startups to get involved in this opportunity. How do you meet up a 20% interest return plus capital within a month if you are not already very business oriented and have readymade flywheels to spin this finance into and stay in profit too.
Still talking of ignorance or carelessness, you know my early phase of entrepreneurship was ALL about doing it yourself. It was one thing that even added up to exempt myself from all this loan and government grants opportunity.
If you want to grow, read books! Keep reading. That I did and I found out how those big entrepreneurs who inspire me have met success. It has never been their hard earned money. All they have to do is conceive a business idea and put it for investors to provide the needed capital to get things going.
Many of them have been able to leverage OPM (Other People's Money) through the bank and increase their wealth. Wow! And there I was thinking I will have to work it out all by myself.
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Someone just sent such government grants opportunities into one of the platforms I am a member of and I tried to look through the site. It was a government sponsored program to give load aids to small entrepreneurs and those even looking for expansion capital.
That was where my eyes was fixed on, at least as a company we have been able to pitch targets and the limitations NOW is to get that long term capital that will ease the burdens. Loan apps are not good at this; as I earlier said, their charges are exaggerating and their time frame is very unrealistic.
I don't know how true the entire process I just saw has been but I will be making a follow up. The idea from the government was to give these grants worth millions of Naira for a reasonable period of time with a percentage annual payout of 7.5%.
For me, it is something tipping my hats for. I know what our brand can do with N5 to N10 million given a reasonable period of payback time. Their eligibility was that you must be a state citizen, have a company/business in the state and also run a CAC registered business.
Our company meets all these criteria but the entry is closed. I don't know if it is for this year but one of the feedback I got from their site was that the government will be monitoring the progress of the current sponsored entrepreneurs to see how it will help trigger the next
phase of such grants/empowerment. Having to rely on the outcome of a predecessor here is where it can need a cross finger, maybe we should have been part of the first phase so that if others choose to misbehave we can scale our business ahead of their pending flaws.
To conclude, let me add, it is something I will have to put up a meeting for with my copartner on how we can explore more opportunities to get easy and long term flexible grants and loans to scale our business. Waiting for that compounding revenue effect will limit us from taking advantage of big contracts and many eyes we can get to at the NOW. Enough capital is a hedge in business and fixing your eyes on such of every opportunity is very needful.
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