Multiple Business Activities (MBA)

Entrepreneurs are dreamers. Dreams come through business. Dreams come true when business actions are taken. Entrepreneurial dreams come from Multiple Business Activities (MBA). Multiple business ideas are the building blocks of qualitative (innovative) entrepreneurship. Most successful entrepreneurs are known for one thing and unknown for many things.

Multiple Business Activities (MBA) allows individuals, organizations and nations to Dream New Activities (DNA). The ability to generate great and new ideas perpetually is tied to MBA and rooted in the ‘DNA’ of all entrepreneurs. The worst thing that can happen to an entrepreneur is not lack of funding but funding ideas that lack entrepreneurial benefits. Multitude of Business (MoB) determines the Altitude of Business (AoB) and engenders great entrepreneurial advantages such as perpetual innovation, multiple business ideas and new Businesses, Opportunities, Landmarks and Developments (BOLD).

ANY OTHER BUSINESS (AOB)?

A business meeting is not complete without an AOB. Entrepreneurship is essentially about solving problems through idea generation. Multitude of words is not the same as multitude of business. The former takes you from problems to problems while the latter, from problems to possibilities (Dreams). So it is not the Length of Words (LOW) in the Minutes of a meeting or the Length of Time (LOT) in minutes or hours that determines the success of a business meeting; it is the Depth of Possibilities and Exchanges (DOPE) that took place. So the next time you chair a business meeting, never allow multitude of words to take the place of multitude of business which is characterized by DOP

So the next time you go for a business meeting or read a business book, watch out for what matters,that is, multitude of business and not multitude of words.

Business dreams inspire because they are full of possibilities and vision. A business plan with many dreams and possibilities will always beat one with many business words and terminologies. Multiple Business Activities (MBA) is everything about Doing New Activities (DNA) through innovation or implementation of new ideas.

Innovation is the application of creative solutions to problems and to possibilities to enhance and to enrich people’s lives.

You don’t necessarily need to hold an MBA (Master of Business Administration) before you can dream possibilities or engage in multiple business activities, all you need is an entrepreneurial mindset. Dream big! Dream new! Dream now!

Mark Zuckerberg’s first job was to build a music player called Synapse. He was 18 when he worked for Synapse and later went on to create Facebook (Meta), one of the most influential platforms of social media. Zuckerberg started his career in programming at a young age, building a messaging program for his father’s dental office and creating a media player for his father. As a child, he also developed video games that were based on his friends’ illustrations.

Previously, Elon co-founded and sold PayPal, the world’s leading Internet payment system, and Zip2, one of the first internet maps and directions services. Elon Musk later co-founded and leads Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and The Boring Company.

Richard Branson hatched Student Magazine, his first business. Branson saw the youth magazines of the day as boring, saying that his ideas were “too ‘revolutionary’ to be aired in the school magazine.” His interschool publication, launched in 1966, was an alternative with attitude. It covered Branson’s passions, such as music and the Vietnam war.

His business plan was simple – just a list of names, potential advertisers and costs that he jotted down in a school notebook. The magazine was run out his co-founder’s parents’ dingy basement. “I was just 16 years old when I founded the magazine, and had no money to put toward it,” writes Branson.

As fate would have it, Branson’s mother found a necklace on the ground near their home and gave it to the police. After months without anyone stepping forward to claim the jewelry, the police returned the necklace to her. His mother sold the necklace for £100 and offered it to her son. (£100, by some calculations, has the purchasing power of around £1,500 in today’s money or just more than $1,900 USD).

The two business partners used the money to pay off their magazine’s electricity and postage bills. “Without it, the business would have collapsed,” Branson writes.

The magazine and the lessons it taught Branson helped kick-start Branson’s business empire. A few years later, Branson would found a mail-order record business which would later become Virgin Records. Branson eventually expanded the Virgin brand to encompass airlines, a music label and even space travel.

“That £100 ended up paving the way for Virgin Galactic, Atlantic and all the other Virgin companies around the world today,” writes Branson.

Dangote Group was created in the late 1970s, when Aliko Dangote established a venture that traded sugar and other consumer goods, which was funded by a $3,000 loan from his grandfather. Later, the group would gradually expand into trading other commodities, such as rice. In 1981, he established two business enterprises, Dangote Nigeria Limited, and Blue Star Services, this was a period when import licenses were required to import bulk commodities, the firm then sought to acquire import licenses for various commodities including steel, baby food, and aluminium products. He then added the shipping and the importing of cement to his group’s portfolio. Dangote competed (and competes) with Lafarge, a French company that imported and produced the bulk of African cement.

Multitude of business births more dreams as multitude of words births more words. Talk is cheap if it does not inspire or lead to multitude of business.

Be known for one thing and unknown for many things! A mono economy is no economy! Multitude of business creates a mono-product economy and engenders new Businesses, Opportunities, Landmarks and Developments (BOLD).

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