Sunny Elem is a real estate consultant and the Managing Director, Nature Hero Limited – a network marketing firm. In this interview with Okechukwu Nnodim, he says young entrepreneurs must realise that failure usually comes before success in business
What is the basic challenge of a prospective entrepreneur?
The first problem usually is funding because every great idea must have some kind of financial backup to put it to the marketplace. But in Nigeria we don’t have adequate access to funding for small scale or medium scale businesses. As an entrepreneur, borrowing money from friends and family sometimes may not be enough to meet your target in order to make it out there.
Also this issue of not having good statistics in the country is a challenge to entrepreneurship. You know when you are planning for a business you would want to rely on statistics in order to do your research very well. But as it is now there seems to be no particular place you can go to get information to aid you in your planning and I faced that challenge too when I was starting.
In Nigeria, if you are starting newly, you don’t get the support of the government unlike what is obtainable around most economies of the world. In the United States where I have some businesses, their economy is based on small scale businesses and that is why they don’t play with them.
