A Tale of 3 Business Lessons

Compliments of the season! It's that time of the year when we get together to have fun with family and friends and reflect on how we fared in the outgoing year.

For me it has been a great year. Thank God for that! I have not been posting here regularly, however, I will endeavour to build a routine into my schedule and keep to it. So help me God.

Now to the essence of this blog. Today, I would like to share with you, 3 lessons I have learned this year from different events around me.

First one, was my interaction with a very courteous commercial motorcycle rider. In Nigerian parlance we call them, Okada. I had just closed at work for the day, and hailed this guy to stop and give me a ride to my place. Before I even started talking, he greeted me very politely. Good evening, Sir! How was your day? After a split second of shock i quickly answered, my day was great, thank you. How was yours? Subsequently, I told him where I headed and he moved. Now so many things went through myind while I was on that bike. This man was probably a family man, someone's daddy, yet he was very polite and courteous. I was thinking of all the ways I could pay him back for being so nice to me. A generous tip maybe? Well, to cut the long story short, I enjoyed the ride, and we had a great chat, in good English, not pidgeon, by the way.
Lesson 1: Always be courteous to your clients. It can open doors in high places for you.

Second lesson was an event at a public area which one could regard as a commercial area.
I had alighted from a bus and was walking towards the area where the Okada guys wait for customers. I noticed there was a bit of commotion around that area, things were scattered and armed policemen were patrolling the area. The tables where the food sellers used to place their wares were turned upside down. The food stuff were inside the truck which the law enforcement officers had arrived with.

The area was very close to a high voltage pylon and as such was not supposed to be a market place. Now before that day, buying and selling had taken place freely. That day the officers took them by surprise. Some of them were arrested.

Lesson 2: Never set up your business in an illegal area. Always ensure you have government approval to do business wherever you set up your business.

The final lesson was from an interaction I had with an Okada rider with whom I had a lease agreement. He was supposed to use the bike which I had paid fully for, make back the money I had spent in buying the bike plus a profit and then the bike would become his.
Now, he had done this the year before and we had a quite smooth period of returning payments amidst some dissatisfaction on my side from delayed payments but nothing major.

This time, I made a very big mistake. I didn't write down our agreement!
He told me what he would be returning as payments weekly and how much he would pay as profit. I thought he said 50% of the price of the bike and probed him further to be sure that was what he meant. Turns out that he had a different figure in mind. He was going to pay a profit of N50,000 and not 50% of the price. Now things didn't go well and we agreed to sell off the bike. He was just misbehaving in so many ways. Of course he had more incidences of delayed payments as well as travelling without even bothering to tell me! So many issues. We decided to sell and guess what? That's when he plainly says that, We usually pay N50,000 as profit to the original owner of the bike who made the investment (me in this case)!

My goodness, I was furious, enraged, angry, but I couldn't hold him accountable because there was no written agreement! I had been played.

Lesson 3: Never go into any business deal with anyone without a form of written agreement specifying the terms and conditions of the contract.

I'll stop here. Do leave a comment on your thoughts about any of the lessons. I would be glad to read them and respond. Thanks.