Our not-so-perfect business model

I have always been fascinated by big businesses growing up. I have always wondered, how does the owner able to manage these complex business operations? I thought about famous founders and business leaders like the likes of Aliko Dangote, Phil Night, Jack Ma, Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg, Henri Nestlé, Carl Benz, just to mention a few. I believe some of these names are familiar to you. If they are not, then let me quickly throw some more light on them, let me pair them with their business names you might recognize them because I know you already “know them”. Lol

Aliko Dangote - Dangote Cement, Nigeria
Phil Knight - Nike
Jack Ma - Alibaba
Sir Richard Branson - Virgin
Mark Zuckerberg - Facebook
Henri Nestlé - Nestlé
Carl Benz - Mercedes Benz

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These are people who sat down and thought about complex ideas of businesses. Well for some of them the ideas grew complex as they started operations. But a manufacturing company like the Dangote Cement manufacturing company by Aliko Dangote should have already been a complex idea from the very beginning. He had to think about all the nitty gritty stuff that should be involved to make the whole manufacturing operations a success. Don’t get me wrong I know these people have cofounders and so did not have to do all the heavy lifting alone by themselves. I am only appreciating the amount of effort of thought they put into it.

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Someone like Sir Richard Branson who started the Virgin Group and which has grown so much that there is currently over 40 companies existing under the mother company, Virgin Group. How fascinating!

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Take Jack Ma also for example, he is famous for founder one of the biggest e-commerce stores in the world but it is clear his business now spans more than just e-commerce. And that e-commerce store has millions of visitors on a daily basis. How could one person single handedly build an empire so big!

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We all grew up enjoying the products of Nestlé like our government manufactures them. Almost, in fact not almost, but all of our tea mixes were from Nestlé. Milo, Nido, ceralac, coffee tea, and many many more.
We used these products mostly for breakfast, and for cereal. Gosh! Even some of our cereals were made by Nestlé! The fact that people are able to create businesses that becomes almost a way of life of people is very intriguing. Were all that thought about while they were creating the business? Is all that part of the business model?

Thinking about it I have come to the realization that without businesses we wouldn’t actually have a way of life. Or it would have been boring. Businesses have a great impact in our way of life as a people. Taking the light off physical business and pointing it to the businesses on the web, you realize that there is rarely any difference in how businesses impact our way of life. One would even say the internet based businesses affect our way of life even more.

Noticed how you are almost attached to your favorite online shop, social media, news portal, online community group? When a day goes by without you visiting any of these you feel uneasy. You feel like there is something missing in your life. That is the power of a strong business model.

Though it is totally a bad thing, I am guilty of this myself. I cannot go an hour without checking my leofinance threads. One hour is even a stretch, I can hardly survive 30minutes without checking my threads. Unless I am doing something that really demands my attention. Like when I am cooking. Or when I am sleeping. Leofinance threads also has a really good business model when it comes to commanding attention.

Every business has what it needs from people and how the business is able to get what it needs depends on the business model. For most businesses our attention is their currency. These are mostly internet based businesses. Whereas physical businesses actually demands some real currency from you.

Our not-so-perfect business model - Case Study

@the5thgroup

THE 5TH GROUP is a business that is meant to promote young talents and help them make a living out of their talents and skillsets. To put it simply, we are a talent management agency. A talent house.

But, we know that the typical talent management agency is usually an established entity with a big budget. But then also, here is the case that we do not have any money or budget but we still want to help groom talents because we believe in their potential. And we know it is just a matter of putting them in the right places at the right times.

Yes talent management is more than just putting people at the right places.

It involves becoming a guardian to that particular talent you are managing. Providing them with everything they need to preserve and improve on their talent and stay happy with you. Say you are an agent to a football player; it is your duty to make sure they do not lack in their “player experience”. You always need to make sure they have good soccer boots, good jerseys, eat well, train regularly and in a good pitch. It is your duty to put them in the spotlight whenever and wherever there is a chance. In these times of social media, it is your duty as the agent/manager to make sure they have an active social media accounts and that it is up to date. Social media do produce opportunities for all forms of talent.

Now, the crooked business model

We started a talent agency without any budget to take care of the talents.

We identified really good talents in our area and put it to ourselves to help(manage) them.
We thought to doing this by using the same talents to manage themselves.

Don’t make sense right ? I got you. Just read on..

We identified a very serious content creator who we thought could really use a team. Then we went ahead to build a team of all the talents he would need to make his life better and help bring his dreams to reality. We got graphic designers, a photographer, and a digital marketer to form a team and work with us. Remember we do not have anything form of compensation for these people. The only form of compensation we have for them is the potential jobs they might get from outside through working with us. We believed that they working with us would serve as a platform to showcase their skills and would get jobs through that.

We held our first event for the content creator “client” and we used all the other talents as we thought to use them. Photographer did his job well, marketing guy did his job well, and the graphic designers also did their jobs very well.

Everyone did their jobs very well but at the end of the day it is the content creator we put on the spotlight. Now this is where our business model felt not so great. We did not have anything for the talents that literally made this happen. The only thing we had for them is hope that the content creator will get big and we will all benefit from him.

As of now we are thinking of ways to improve our business model and run a fair business.