THE 10 COMMANDMENT FOR NEW BUSINESS OWNER(S)-(BUSINESS RULES)
THE 10 COMMANDMENT FOR NEW BUSINESS OWNER(S)
(BUSINESS RULES)
By: Joel Okama Yakubu

Business Rule No. 1:
Do not build dreams around ideas because ideas fade off too soon; rather build your dreams around your passion and ideas will naturally pop-up!

Lessons 1:
A combination of your dreams, your passion, and the amalgamation of your infinitesimal ideas will form your new identity cum philosophy and a vehicle to take you to the Promised Land!! Safe and peaceful journey guys, lets meet at the 'destination'!

Instance 1:
Warren Buffet (Investment), Oprah Winfrey (Talk Show), Steve Jobs (Computational Graphic Design), Bill Gates (Computer Programming), Aliko Dangote (Merchandizing &Trading), Mark Zuckerberg (Social Technology), Jay Z (Music Record Label)

Business Rule No. 2:
Start-up your business or products by making your 'mission' very realistic while your 'vision' should and must always be a fantasy for generational continuity to reign.

Lessons 2:
Your 'vision' is the destination while your 'mission' is the vehicle that drives your company to that desired destination. The great lesson here is that it make sense for a 'vision' to remain unattainable so that in the process of working hard to get to this infinite destination you'll eventually become a great force to reckon with because you would have gone through every needed obstacle; and whilst your mission may undergo momentary changes the vision should remain sacrosanct for several generations to witness and reference to the next generation.

Instance 2:
Google, Inc. (To organize the world’s information and make them universally accessible and useful), Microsoft Corp. (To see the personal computer in household worldwide and to be their software king), Starbucks, Inc. (To plant Starbucks coffee shops in every corner of the world), Sheik Mohammed of Dubai (To make Dubai the most beautiful city in the world).

Business Rule No.3:
From day one create a separate personality for your business but let your DNA as the founder run through every facet of the system such that it becomes a reference and standard that every other endeavors are built on even after the business outlived you and your current crew.

Lessons 3:
If you create a separate personality for your business, it will be easy for you and your crew to communicate with the business and receive essential feedback when needed. Your business should be able to run to you for advice just like children run to their parent for help. There should be mutually exclusive identities so that the next generation of entrepreneurs can easily plug in and ride on to another infinite generation.

Instance 3:
Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg), Apple Computer (Steve Jobs), McDonald’s (Ray Kroc), Globacom Telecom (Mike Adenuga), Microsoft (Bill Gates), Starbucks (Howard Schultz), Google (Larry Page & Sergey Brin).

Business Rule No.4:
Don't ever hire close friends or family members in a new business except if they have some essential resources and/or when they possess exceedingly marvelous skill sets, and/ or if you can easily fire them when they are about to mess things.

Lessons 4:
The right time to hire a friend or family member is when the business has out-grown few individuals other than the founder(s)."

Instance 4:
Mark Zuckerberg (Only hired his sister to work at Facebook because she was very qualified and has a Harvard degree), Lakshmi Mittal (He hired his son as a CFO because he is intelligent having graduated from the prestigious Wharton Business School).

Business Rule No.5:
Pay more attention to your employee's well-being instead of putting your customers first, reason is that a sad employee can never honestly make a customer happy; and since ‘charity begins at home’, employees must be truly happy before other stakeholder are considered.
Lessons 5
Marketing cum promotions are full of lies, scam, deceits & sacrilege...I would rather invest heavily in making my employees happy than doing the former. The Idea here is that when your employees are happy they will take your business as their own, therefore igniting an atmosphere for the kind of innovation that will later lead to the creation of useful & beautiful products that will truly make the customer happy.

Instances 5:
Southwest Airline, Google Inc., Facebook Inc.

Business Rule No.6:
Don't ever start a business in a consumer product world with an ultimate motive of striking profit from the beginning; it is more rational to go after break-even and by default your customer’s loyalty will pop-in profit in the future.

Lessons 6:
If you put profit first you will never satisfy your employees because they will be fatigue in chasing and deceiving the customers, hence your customers may get fatigued as your company's intrigues may become so visible with time...hence, you may be handing your competitors a free cake when your customers eventually crossed over. In business, initial losses or breakeven could be your own way of doing philanthropy.

Instance 6:
Amazon (Was unprofitable for a long time before they became a world eCommerce leader), Zappos Inc. (They are the king of customer service through employee satisfaction).

Business Rule No.7:
As a new or small start-up business you must build your product so unique and unrelated to others to avoid igniting the attention of existing industry giants, else they will use their huge cash deposit and market merits to crush-off your business to a special grave called 'bankruptcy'! Ask Netscape and its ghost what Microsoft did to them during the dot-com days.

Lessons 7:
Learn early to build your product to look totally different and try as much to pretend to be pursuing something different until you are huge enough to fight the giants...at that time you are already in the same club, so you must have grasps every rudiment inherent. Check out how Facebook is keeping Google at the edge these days or how Google is making Microsoft cry all night.

Instance 7:
Netscape (This Company was crushed because they were fighting a bigger giant, Microsoft), Odeo.com (Apple gave away similar product that Odeo was selling then for free and that was the end of Odeo's life).

Business Rule No.8:
See your competitor as someone trying to take food out of the mouth of your children or loved ones.

Lessons 8:
Crush your competitors with hyper innovation rather than mischief, as a rule of thumb any business that can't innovate should have no business doing business!

Instance 8:
Wal-Mart vs. Amazon, Apple iOS vs. Android OS, Groupon vs. LivingSocial

Business Rule No.9:
At any given time, strive to keep your product line as low as possible...and strive to forbid starting a new business with multiple products. "Just like a man can never 'love' more one woman at a time", so it is with entrepreneurs starting out with so many products.

Lessons 9:
There is wisdom in keeping a single or fewer products that you can manage effectively...you will grow fasting when you do few things and become a winner rather than keeping multiple products that could pose a great problem of poor focus.

Instance 9:
Starbucks Inc. & Apple Inc.

Business Rule No.10:
Keep your young business far away from experts for as long as you can, they are ironic pessimist and their theories in most cases are likely to impede innovation...experts are conventionalist that believe firmly in anything status-quo. And innovation means 'breaking conventional rules to disrupt faded games'.

Lessons 10:
Use the fund you are supposed to allocate to experts to hire group of crazy young free thinkers and give them the mandate to legitimately destroy conventional rules at sight with the power of crazy imagination.

Instance 10:
Henry Ford (Ford Motors), Steve Jobs (Apple), Sam Walton (Wal-Mart)

Supplementary Business Advice:
If you are starting a new business I’ll advice you focus much attention, ideas and energy on developing the product first, business plans can come later...business plans cum profitability urge are some of the greatest distraction to building appealing products. Let your product design determine the kind of business strategy to create or adopt and not the reverse. But above all keep your product as simple as possible....that is, kill all levels of complexities so that it appeals to the lowest leveled user out there!

Business Rule & Lessons Conclusion:
At the end of what you may call retirement from active business make sure that you've served the human race positively by solving parts of the most challenging problems around and if it is done meritoriously the same system will evolve rewards that comes with wealth, fame, and power that may outlast generations.
My special appreciation goes to my business idols the late Steve Jobs (Founder, Apple Computers), Henry Ford (Founder, Ford Motors), Ray Kroc (Re-founder, McDonald), Sir Samuel Adedoyin (Founder, Doyin Group Nigeria), Soichiro Honda (Founder, Honda Motors), Richard Branson (Founder, Virgin Group), Jack Dorsey (Creator, Twitter & Square).

*JOEL OKAMA YAKUBU (THE NEXT GREAT CEO @ SILICON VALLEY), I'm actually looking for two programmers to join me as co-founders in my new internet project, I'm specifically looking for people that believe in achieving great things in life in the midst of tough challenges, I'm blessed with ideas and I have co-created two products in the past with a partner and this will be my third project. I have the following academic records- BS Business Administration @ A.B.U Zaria, Masters of Business Administration (MBA) @ Texas A&M University, MS Technology Management @ Texas A&M University. I intend to have just two co-founders for this current project, if you think you can shake the world with me please send me a direct email at contact: joel.tamu@gmail.com or joelokama@yahoo.com