This is a precursor to our forthcoming Quick Start Guide Book titled “How to Cheaply Make Cup Cakes without an Oven or Cooker & Sell Them for Profit” – based on what we do, as a family.
Details of the book’s contents are supplied at the end of this PDF, which – for now – offers some background about why we do what we do, the way we do it.
PLUS, a little peek into an impromptu real life production session we had yesterday – Tuesday 8th October 2014!
“When you saw me in the boxing ring fighting, it wasn’t just so I could beat my opponent. My fighting had a purpose. I had to be successful in order to get people to listen to the things I had to say.” – MUHAMMAD ALI, The Soul of a Butterfly
I recently watched a video – click here to watch now – of Muhammad Ali (at age 35) speaking to a large audience (comprising adults and kids). A young boy asked him “What will you do when you retire?” Ali’s answer proved his boxing genius was matched by an acute sense of “life purpose”.
Now, he did not just state it simply in a few words. Ali – always a man who practiced what he preached – took the audience on what I would call an intellectual journey of self-discovery. Especially as it relates to finding one’s purpose in line with the creator’s will.
In order to prepare their minds, Ali started by asking if there were people in the audience who believed in God. Then he asked to see the hands of any who did NOT believe there was a God. In both cases there were hands raised.
But before that he took asked if man made objects we use daily – like cups etc – could have made themselves. The answer was no.
Following upon that, he then asked if those who claimed not to believe in God could explain how such well planned collection of parts that make up the earth came into being.
Ali went on to conclude that the amazing complexity of the earth itself provided ample proof that a superior and supreme form on intelligence, well above ours, was at work.
And as a result, he knew there had to be a purpose for which God had made him. Ali added that if Hell – where those who fail to do God’s will are said to be sent – existed, he would rather work to NOT go there after he dies.
In order to achieve that goal of making heaven, Ali said he had thought of the active years in his life outside those spent sleeping etc – and decided he would use his fame and success to help others e.g. by partnering with NGOs and other support groups.
AND THAT, he said was what he would do after he retired from boxing.
Today, everybody knows that Ali has kept his word with regard to what he said on that day. Several decades ago as a young man.
And his fame has not waned up till now. Neither has the respect and admiration AND love he enjoys from people across the world diminished. This is one man with the rare ability to make people forget their differences. The Muhammad Ali Centre continues to carry on the Ali legacy of helping those who need it.
And Ali remains a central figure – even now in his old age, and despite the health challenge he has had to deal with.
His words spoken over the past decades that get shared on the wall of his Facebook page continue to inspire millions across the world. I, for one continue to draw MASSIVE inspiration from this man’s words that I read as a fan on his page.
Ali did that. He looked beyond his vocation, to carve out a vision – and a mission from the vision.
He had a message for the world, and he was determined to share that message. But he knew the world would not easily pay attention to a person who was not NOTEWORTHY. So, he let that need to make them LISTEN to him drive his boxing efforts.
That led him to explore all sorts of creative ways to draw attention to himself while boxing.
For example, Ali’s habit of using rhyming poems to communicate – especially to opponents – was unique. Till date, no other boxer has succeeded in doing what he did so well.
People wanted not just to SEE him. They also wanted to hear him speak. To know what he thought about issues affecting them. Even to know what his stand was.
Evidence that Ali’s thinking was as described above can be found in material he shares from his archives even today.
For instance, not long ago, he shared a photo of himself, with a quote that helped me better understand why he chose to adopt such a boldly vocal approach to his own brand of boxing.
When you saw me in the boxing ring fighting, it wasn’t just so I could beat my opponent. My fighting had a purpose. I had to be successful in order to get people to listen to the things I had to say. – MUHAMMAD ALI, The Soul of a Butterfly [Click here for source]
No matter what it is. Think of how you can link what you succeed at today, to what you can do well into your later years that can make the lives of others better.
That desire to achieve your long term vision will help you do what it takes to excel in your more immediate pursuits.
Then later on, you will find that the platform of success you arrive on in future, will make it easy to carry on with your bigger vision/mission right into your old age.
That’s why Ali’s impact continues to be felt even today – LONG after he retired from boxing. Each one of us can make our impact felt the same way too – if we emulate the great Muhammad Ali!
“I try not to speak about all the charities I help, because I believe we can only be truly generous when we expect nothing in return.” – Muhammad Ali
“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” – Pablo Picasso
I am VERY childishly excitable and I SHOW IT. Not all my clients understand IT, but most like IT, because (IF I take on their project) IT makes me DELIVER what I promise them.
Unlike Most “Mature & Enlightened” Adults (Whatever That Means), I Don’t Act “Cool, Calm and Collected” When I’m EXCITED!
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I often groan when I hear a celebrity answer the question about the secret of his/her success by saying something like “Na God O!” (i.e. “It’s God’s handiwork!”). You see, I also succeed with God’s help. BUT, I KNOW there’s more to success achievement than saying “Na God O!” suggests!
And this is where successful people in developed societies often differ from us.
Read an interview with them, and you’ll come away with practical ideas – sometimes step by step instructions – of how to proceed in trying to replicate the success they are celebrated for.
That is why they are able to write books that offer actionable advice on how to succeed the way they have. It is why they are able to demystify their own success achievement for those following them to learn from, and improve upon.
In our societies across Africa too many successful people rarely offer tangible insights into what made them succeed. But to be fair, sometimes they actually do not know – or have not given it enough thought to articulate it into any useful form.
The truth is NOT all those who say they worship God are able to produce performances that will make them become successful/celebrated personalities!
And that is because there are so many specific actions/steps that successful persons take that those NOT as successful do not take as frequently and/or as diligently.
I believe that many of the interviewed authentic celebrities I refer to would have loved to give more insight into HOW and WHAT made them succeed, if the right kinds of “probing” questions had been asked of them.
Unfortunately, often times their interviewers are not alert to the need to do this for the enhanced benefit of their viewing/listening audiences.
Anyone who has read transcripts of the popular “Conversations With Millionaires” series will understand what I mean.
I refer to the ability of certain interviewers to ask “probing” questions that get answers OUT OF successful persons, IN A WAY that gives listeners more accurate insight into HOW and WHY the celebrities succeeded.
As they say, “Success leaves a trail…”
Our celebrities need to be “helped” to “remember” what they did (& how), in the manner I propose above.
This is because many of them never really sat down (after having succeeded) to THINK about what they actually did to get the results they wanted – and for which they subsequently became celebrated.
This is a fact.
In our society, if we want success to happen for MORE people, MORE frequently, we need to establish and rigorously maintain systems to INVESTIGATE and DOCUMENT what makes celebrated members of society succeed.
This is so that others who aspire can use the information recorded to achieve similar or greater successes – FASTER and with LESS EFFORT.
One over riding benefit is that society will as a result develop faster, contributing to a better world.
Each person is so self focused that s/he hardly ever gives a thought to how s/he can make the journey shorter, and less difficult for those who follow.
Tell him/her to GO for a particular goal, and s/he will.
But most often it will be done in a haphazard manner, and with little or no effort to ANALYSE experiences and document lessons learned for future reference/guidance.
Following from the above, when things fall in place, s/he takes it in his/her stride without sparing a thought for HOW to make those same things fall in place like THAT again in future – repeatedly.
A direct consequence of that inadvertent oversight, is that when things eventually go WRONG, s/he once again has to adopt the trial and error approach used in the past, until, if s/he is lucky, ANOTHER break through occurs.
For many who use this haphazard approach, it possibly works often. However, compared to the alternative proposed in this article, it can be quite costly in terms of time, effort, and even money.
1. The stress/strain that will arise from recovering from the problems occasioned by the use of a trial and error approach will wear you down – making the “journey to success” more PAINFUL than it should be.
2. You will be inefficient – because it takes you LONGER and costs you MORE time, effort, resources etc, to get the same results.
3. You won’t improve significantly – meaning you may never become good enough to beat your own “Personal Best”. Look at it this way: Only a sprinter who measures and knows her best 100 metres time is 9.99 seconds can AIM to run faster and therefore cross the line at LESS than that time. To achieve that goal, she will then have to CHECK what she can do better or differently to INCREASE her running speed, then TRY it out, UNTIL she succeeds.
The above potentially negative outcome of failing to investigate and understand why you succeed, is that you will LACK the means to EXPAND or GROW.
This could end up giving critics and/or cynics an opportunity to “question” your success.
Almost yearly, that country produces World Class athletes who gain quick prominence in international circles.
This happens because Kenya has a SYSTEM in place that enables it to REPEAT and REPRODUCE its athletic successes. I have listened to interviews conducted with athletes from that country, and the answers they gave to questions asked confirm this.
If you were to look at yourself, your organisation, your society or your country from a similar perspective, is it possible that there are areas where the success(es) achieved in the past now appear to have been just a “flash(es) in the pan”?
IF YES, maybe it’s time you (and/or others concerned), sat down to INVESTIGATE and DOCUMENT why you succeeded back then, so that you can REPRODUCE it NOW and into the future.
NB: This article was first published Online via spontaneousdevelopment.com on16th June 2008.
What should influence your decision about how much funds to ask for in your start-up poultry layer farm business plan? Does the size of your prospective investors pockets need to be a factor in deciding what scale you start your enterprise at?
This article features excerpts from suggestions I emailed to a recent client on this theme.
For instance, consider a business plan in which the poultry house will take up to 2,500 birds at P.O.L (i.e. Point Of Lay).
The question is would you be able to cope with that large a flock size in your 1st year and given your experience level (i.e. if you’ve not done it before)?
Poultry farming can be a delicate enterprise when one is still in a learning phase.
If you’re still holding down a 9 to 5 job – like more people venturing into it these days – it means you’ll have to do it part time.
You may not find it easy to to cope with day to day running for the first 15 month cycle, given that you’re still not fully free, plus you’ll be depending on a 3rd party.
This is why we have people who launch their poultry farms with no business plans, and they do well, while some others don’t.
The difference is often in the daily hands on management.
Handling 2,000 laying birds to make profits takes a lot more than handling 1,000.
The way I see it, you would be better off trying out for say 500 birds in one scenario and 1,000 birds in the other.
With each, you can tell prospective investors that you plan to scale up by 50% in the 2nd year.
This would be more realistic, given your experience.
Incidentally, several of the clients I have now requesting my software told me they started with 500 to 1,000, and are now “expanding” after the 1st or 2nd year with those numbers.
Hence their need to formulate their own feed (using my ration formulator) and/or also track and trend the birds performance (using my poultry farm manager)
As your flock size increases in year 2 or 3, cost of feeding will need finer control to boost profit margins, hence you would aim to buy less commercial feed and make more of your own formulated feed at feed mills.
Doing the above will require closer hands on management that I anticipate you may need time to master from your 1st year, given that it’s your first outing.
Hopefully you see what I mean.
Instead you should dwell on how good your chances of making a success of the venture are!
Incidentally, a smart thinking investor with integrity (e.g. one who worked hard, smart and honestly to make his money) is likely to appreciate the need to start conservatively, as being proposed here, for the first year, so you gain valuable know how and experience to scale up more profitably in the 2nd year.
This is livestock rearing my brother – profitable, but potentially risky as well!
A single oversight which led to an outbreak of Salmonella infection in a past client’s farm somewhere in South West Nigeria, last year left him struggling to get 25% egg laying from 4,000 birds that had been laying 70 to 80% each day for months before then!
At a point he was spending more than he was getting from them, on feeding, medication etc. And they were still dying!
Eventually, to cut the losses, they slaughtered most of them, and focused on a new batch of P.O.L they had luckily been rearing from day old.
Now imagine if he had been using investors funds and not his own money?
That unplanned setback would have delayed paying any returns to the investor.
And it happened because of
poor management e.g. birds found a way to drop from their (old) cages into the droppings on the floor and began pecking and walking around in the droppings etc!Instead of isolating them, some farm hands put those same birds back in the cages with others. This kept happening with no one thinking anything of it.
It was a disaster waiting to happen. And it eventually did, with a sudden marked drop in eggs output for about 2 weeks, followed by a rash of deaths.
My client was still in paid employment then, in a distant location – many hours away in another country. By the time I got to the farm (he asked his driver to take me down), the deep freezer was filled with hurriedly slaughtered layers!
The farm manager told me they were almost begging people to buy the frozen ones to free up space to keep more. And she was a trained graduate of agric, who had been managing the place for about 2 years (plus pigs and fish farms)!
And that explains why some people who did not even study agric, and who also had no business plans at startup have often succeeded in livestock farming.
They do it hands on, diligently, and take no chances – because their life savings are often invested!
My purpose here is to get you to understand that we’re dealing with living things here, which if not well handled can under perform or even die.
My role as a consultant is to offer my insights based on experience and know-how, to guide my clients in making what will hopefully be wise and profitable choices in the long run.
Once I’ve done that, my conscience stays clear.
When you succeed 1st time around, there will be an established basis on which to ask your investor to shell out more – if needed. And he’s likely to do so gladly, if the results you have to show are encouraging!
That’s how I see it: Prove yourself with a little first e.g. 500 and 1,000 as the 2 start-up scenarios.
Then you’ll be able to scale up, building on valuable experience you’ve gained – and even your investor will see good reason to go along with you.
Having said all the above…it will ultimately be YOURS to decide. If you wish to start big, go ahead.
Just be sure to proceed as carefully as possible.
Know also, that whatever you decide to do, will most likely have irreversible consequences in the end.
Hopefully, you’ll like what you get.
Good luck!
2 days ago I got a pleasant surprise when a “Production Metallurgist” with a Namibian firm sent me this message via TayoSolagbade.com:
“My boss gave me your ebook on the 25 articles on self-development as a present. However, I am struggling to contact you in order to get the links in the book to become functional. Can you possibly e-mail me the contact form so that I can send you a copy of the invoice. As it stands, I do not have access to all the articles in the ebook.”
Before now, I only got the payment alerts sent by Lulu.com. Not once have I ever been able to identify those who purchased my books.
The Lulu.com system – for obvious security reasons – does not permit that. However, it does allow us sellers to setup auto response messages in our online stores, to be delivered to buyers.
In mine, I invite the buyer to contact me if s/he needs help making use of the book etc.
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Next, I sent him the first of a planned 2 part response as follows:
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Since I lost my 9 year old domain – spontaneousdevelopment.com on 4th May 2014, I have been unable to find extra time to do the needed cleaning up in my other information products.
Ironically, one reason for this is the fact that since I adopted my tayosolagbade.com domain name, and began re purposing my website content on it, the leads generation I’ve been getting has really shot up.
I’ve said that much in subsequent articles – like THIS one (click).
Add to that the demand for my web marketing services by 2 new clients here in Cotonou, and you may understand why I’ve NOT been able to clean up my bylines in my Ezinearticles.com articles, talk less of updating the same in my e-books.
Thankfully, this buyer reaching out to me with my ebook made me dig in and do an much needed update. Now, I just have to make out time to upload it to replace the old one in my online store.
For now, I’ve sent the updated ebook to the above mentioned lady, as an email attachment.
And I also addressed the 2 requests he made…
Excerpts from the response I sent to him, which I believe other farm business enthusiasts will find useful – hence my decision to share it here.
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In yesterday’s article, I announced that I was preparing a special business plan preparation service bundle – and that it was based on the recent elaborate business plan preparation project I recently completed for a new client in Nigeria.
Now, like I said in the email above, this new service will soon be formally launched here on www.tayosolagbade.com
When the sales page goes up, I will announce it on this blog, and also via a newsletter broadcast to my email subscribers.
UPDATE: The service is LIVE. Click here to visit the sale page.
[Update: Uploaded CORRECTED PDF which now has pics – and NO missing text at 3.50p.m] Today, 1st October 2014, is Independence Day in my country – Nigeria. In this special issue No. 9, of “My Ideas for Making Nigeria Better” series (downloadable below as a PDF), I explain why I believe Nigeria’s ability to reap FULL benefits from her Independence from colonialists, will depend MAINLY on INDIVIDUAL Nigerians learning to THINK and ACT INDEPENDENTLY at ALL times.
