At the beginning of every year, people make resolutions known as “New Year resolutions”. A New Year resolution is a resolve or determination to stop a behaviour or trait(s), or to start a behaviour or trait(s) with the aim of achieving a goal or changing a situation. New Year resolutions usually attempt to stop a bad habit or some perceived bad habits like smoking, reducing alcohol intake or night-crawling. Resolutions of a New Year may also include: “to accomplish a personal goal or goals like buying or building a personal house”. The practice of making a New Year resolution is as old as the world itself. It was a custom established in the Western and Eastern worlds in the past. Nowadays, everybody and every organisation makes New Year resolutions, especially in the Third World. A business organisation’s New Year resolution may be “to stop selling to customers on credit” or “to start manufacturing low-priced products for the majority of our customers.”
Everybody suffers from “reserved judgement” and procrastinates; we all postpone making firm judgements or decisions or to carry out our decisions especially where they involve spending money. With the notion that time is money, our ‘reserved judgement’ or procrastination may be a costly mistake especially when the judgement is about investing money or making an extra stream of income. Though there are popular sayings that “it is better to be healthy than to be wealthy”, “it’s better to be happy than to be rich”, and there is A. J. Materi’s quotation which says, “So many people spend their health gaining wealth, and then have to spend their wealth to regain their health”, if one has the capacity, it is good to work extra hard in one’s youth or early life so that one can retire early or work leisurely at old age. There is nothing as sweet as having multiple sources of income or having a source of income that can pay for one’s ‘insatiable’ and modest needs!
My New Year resolution in 2023 is to start my own business, in no matter how little way possible. Businesses are activities that are embarked upon to provide services, produce goods and products for customers. Registered business organisations or business names are the avenues for doing business in Nigeria, according to Section 1 of the Companies and Allied Matters Act, Cap C. 20, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004 (CAMA). Business organisations are vehicles of profit-making, employment generation and wealth creation. They are established to assist individuals, states and Federal governments generate income and be socially responsible to their immediate communities by providing assistance and infrastructure for the people. Businesses also utilise the raw materials in a nation and are the livewire of banking and finance, transport, insurance, real estate, and manufacturing industries.
My business development resolution is due to the fact that I want to contribute my quota to reducing unemployment among Nigerians, especially the youths, and generate extra income for myself. My acquired business theory and experience show that new businesses can either fall into one of the following three categories: one, new innovation-, and invention-, products – for example, developing a flying motorcycle or a self-cleaning cloth or glowing ceiling; two, building on the businesses of others in a symbiotic or parasitic way – for example, Facebook, WhatsApp, Skype, LagosRide, Uber, Lyft, AirbnB, etc, and internet; three, imitated business with the aim of improving or maintaining the status-quo. If one cannot invent new products and services or innovate new business ideas, one should be able to rest on the shoulders of giants and establish a profit making exercise like renting a building and converting it to ‘hotel and suites’ in a good location.
As the last alternative, I can rent a space and turn it into a restaurant and sell local foods. The easiest business to do is to transact business on basic needs of man like food, housing and clothing. The challenge is that there may be a low margin business because of the number of entrants. If you are unique, very good at what you are doing and can provide more quality products than your peers, you will always get customers. The business environment in the world is unsaturated. A prospective business man only needs to painstakingly identify a lucrative business, do a correct business risks analysis and “go for broke”. I have also learnt, with time, that the greatest challenge in establishing a sustainable business is not finance but lack of good business ideas. With a good business idea, one can easily get a good business consultant that can develop a good bankable “business proposal” for bank-loan. I have also learnt the rudiments of business management and accounting principles so that I do not go bankrupt or cash-strapped.
This New Year, I am going to establish an event organising and tourist’s sites-visiting business in Nigeria. According to a report, Dubai welcomed almost four million international overnight visitors between January and March 2022, a massive 214 percent growth from last year, reaffirming its position as the first choice destination for global travellers. The city also ranked number one globally in hotel occupancy in the first quarter of 2022, with 82 percent. With 12,000 restaurants and cafes, Dubai has also been steadily growing as a ‘gastronomic hotspot’. The city entices food-lovers with its world-renowned chefs, global restaurant brands, street food and home-grown restaurants inspired by the over 200 nationalities living in the emirate. In 2021, Dubai established itself as the world’s leading meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions (MICE) destination, hosting a number of events that put it at the heart of global conversations on the recovery of key sectors.
According to Dubai’s Department of Economy and Tourism, the city captured a total of 120 events for the year 2021 and beyond that, are set to bring together a total of 70,000 opinion leaders, government officials and industry professionals. Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt are on the top of my priority cities. Eko Atlantic city, Lagos; World Trade Centre, Abuja and Port Harcourt man-made beach are three of the places to be showcased to visitors. After the COVID-19 pandemic, visitors are coming out to conferences, workshops and seminars in large numbers, globally. Expo 2020 Dubai, the largest event in the history of World Expos, saw 192 participating countries coming together for ‘Connecting Minds, Creating the Future’ in a celebration of culture, innovation and science. The six-month mega global extravaganza attracted over 24 million visits by residents and global travellers.
New York expects 56.4 million total visitors by 2022 according to NYC & Company. That will be an 85 percent increase over the 2019 record-breaking tourism level. It is also forecasted that international visitors to London will grow from 2021 level by 260 percent to 11.2 million in 2022. This year’s World Government Summit in Dubai brought together more than 4,000 international participants, including top government officials to share ideas for building responsive governments that can deal with the challenges of the future. South Africa’s total tourists’ arrivals in the period January to June, 2022, hit 2,285,746 up by 147 percent compared to the same period in 2021, according to the Tourism Minister, Lindiwe Sisulu. There is a lot of sense in investing in the tourism market and events hosting in Nigeria.
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