Dealing with Business Monsters. (Part 1)

Have you ever stopped for a minute to think about the phrase "Business Monsters"? If this never crossed your mind, then you are one lucky fella that has succeeded in running a business without being negatively impacted by the direct or indirect activities of those who are either your competitors, your internal team or your good and bad ideas for the business itself.

In recent times, the surge in domestic violence has led majority of people to believe that monsters only existed in marriages, but to be factual, Business owners know very well that monsters do exist in the business world.

Alot of businesses have had to close down for various reasons, and out of every 10 businesses that close down in Nigeria for instance, at least 5 out of those 10 businesses are shut as a result of the impact of these business monsters. These business monsters attack businesses in various ways, and it takes very strong business minded people with experience to survive.

Identifying  Business Monsters

Like I said earlier, if you have succeeded in running a business without being negatively impacted by the direct or indirect activities of those who are either your competitors, your internal team or your good and bad ideas for the business itself, then you are one lucky fella in business. This simply means Business Monsters comes in three unique ways, which are in form of;

Competitors who are in the same business as you, or are planning to start up a business like yours, with the aim of surpassing your business by all means. I mean don't get me wrong, we are all in business to better off the next person and to make profit, Right? but when your competitor sets out to bring down your business at all cost, then that competitor becomes your Business Monster. A good example of this is when a popular Nigerian noodles brand, loved by kids and adult went viral for containing cancer inducing ingredients and how toxic this could be for everyone eating it. This rumor ended up being cleared by the media who made it popular in the first place.Little did people know that there was another popular company which had started producing noodles, and needed that bad publicity for the other noodles brand in order to sell theirs when it eventually hits the market stand. While the new competitor succeeded for a short period of time, the popular Noodles Brand bounced back in Full Force, and still reclaimed its position as the number one Noodles in Nigeria today.

The lesson here is that, not only did the popular Noodles Brand identify its "Business Monster", the brand went ahead to fight it completely by reassuring its consumers and raising the bar  to become a "brand like no other".

Internal Team are by far the worst Business Monsters ever, you are better off with a Competitor as your business monster, but not an internal member of your team. These set of Business Monsters are dangerous in several ways. They know all your trade secret and can always sell you out to your competitors at the push of a button. No business owner deserves to have a bad team, because it just messes up a large part of the business no matter what you do. With an Internal Team as your business monster, no amount of good advertisement or publicity can sell your business, because this monster will never seize to feed your competitors executive and explicit information about your strategies. A good example of businesses with Internal Business Monsters is the Telecoms Industry, although you find them in every industry, but their operation and modus operandi in the Telecoms Industry is more conspicuous than any other industry. You want to know how? That's a trade secret that only the gurus discuss, so lets leave that out.

Your Ideas, whether good or bad and your ability to make the right decision are another type of Business Monsters that business owners are familiar with. I see you nodding your head in affirmation to this right? Yeah Good! Business Owners have had to fight their own internal demons which comes in form of their own ideas for their business venture. Not every business will succeed, and not every Business Owner can solely drive his own ideas towards achieving success. The moment a Business Owner serves as the only decision maker in his business (this is strictly for large businesses, and not SMEs), then his ideas could either build a stronger empire or see his big empire crumbling. As your business grows, the need to seek expert opinions becomes very crucial to the growth of your business. There are so many people who make the mistake of fighting with this business monsters (their ideas) and eventually suffer a big blow. Businesses which fall into this category are usually penny wise, pound foolish.

Its very important for businesses to identify their own  Monsters on time, in order to be able to nip it in the bud before it gets out of control. Every business goal is profit, except for charity organizations, even some NGOs these days have silently added Not for Profit Making to their scope. 

In my next post, I will conclude on how to deal with Business Monsters, where I will be talking about how some Economic Policies could pose as a business monster to some business owners. 

Have you been faced with any challenges in your business, be kind enough to share it with us, or share tips on how you over came those challenges. 

No matter how small your business challenges are, they are Monsters and they should be dealt with.