Are you on the verge of requesting for a loan, attending an interview for loan application or awaiting the outcome of your loan application? This write up is written is with you on my mind!

I have received a few emails and phone calls bordering on the topic above and subsequent requests from clients that I advice them on ” how to go about it(loan application and interview process), I mean questions to ask, steps to take and how to negotiate with them in a way to the loan will favour me(him) because I am(he’s) starting up a new biz..”,quoting one of such requests.

Interestingly,I have dedicated a whole chapter to this area of business startup and survival strategy in my book ‘1000+ Practical Business Ideas and Directory of Money Sources’ but I am grateful still for the opportunity offered by these enquiries to remind you of these following steps to observe when having a loan application interview.

1. Have a sound business plan document with you. You can use the business plan templates in my book to develop your own business plan. Remember that documentation is key.

2. Know how much you want and how you intend to pay back the loan so you can state and emphasize this at the interview ( Don’t say “it’s already stated in my proposal”!)

3. State the collateral you are willing to offer,at least be realistic, most loan givers are more comfortable giving loan to someone willing to provide a collateral even if they may not use the value of your collateral to determine the value of your loan or vice versa.

4. If it’s a relatively new business, state some of your previous accomplishments in business.

5. Dress conservatively,be confident and relaxed.
Look into their eyes when speaking.

6. Be as honest as possible. Let them be convinced of your credibility.

7. Pray for favour.I like to remind you that the ‘heart’ of the king ( loan provider) is in God’s hand and can be turned to embrace and favour your request.

8. After the interview,remember to do a letter of appreciation to the loan provider  and if your loan request fails to sail through, humbly and politely request to find out reasons why your loan application was rejected.

Don’t ever give up on your business goal.
I wish you good luck and God speed.

Sunkanmi Vaughan is the author of the most authoritative business opportunity handbook ‘1000+ Practical Business Ideas and Directory of Money Sources‘

The title above is not a question in business theory,it’s a factual question you must answer in practice.Imagine you have to answer correctly fifty multiple choice questions in an exam and all these fifty questions have a single uniform answer?To pass or fail such an exam is ‘all or null’, you either get the single correct answer  for these fifty questions and score 100% or fail to get that correct answer, you score 0%. Lobatan!

The answer to the question on what you must never do while building your business is like that single answer to many different questions and challenges you will face in your business. You get this answer right; your business survives, you get it wrong;bye-bye to your dream of achieving a successful business!

Now the answer to ‘What You Must Never Fail To Do?’ is so important because you are about to build a business or your business is already on a ‘stwong'(a tongue twist for pronouncing strong and wrong as a single not-so-funny word) foundation.

If I were you,I’ll learn,unlearn and learn myself as my business assumes a life of its own and for me to be sure that my business is standing on a solid foundation. I have personally experienced business hitches, failures and successes and consulted for businesses enough to know that my answer to this question in the title must be answered by me.

Now let’s consider this analogy.If a building project is next to your house and the builder spends just few days of man hours working on the building site with little quantity of building materials and no sooner completed the building foundation A,while opposite your house,another builder spends months of intensive man hours and huge material quantity to complete his building foundation B.Who between the two builders is building a skyscraper?

This is the same thing in building business empires and you are either building a hut or a skyscraper depending on how well and long you spend quality time and materials in building the foundation of your business.

If your business foundation is faulty or weak, you honestly don’t have a business and if you think you do, wait until you see the business crumble with time if you fail to address the missing element in your business foundation. I am not a prophet of doom and I guarantee you that I will be personally responsible to you with free business consulting service for not less than a year if after taking my advice and your business still fails irredeemably.

What is that single thing you must not fail to do when building your business?Hmm..

The answer is simple. You must “never forget to THINK VALUE“.

A personal value is an individual’s absolute or relative and ethical rules for making decisions, the assumption of which can be the basis for your actions.

A value system is a set of consistent values and measures you adopt in everything you do including business decisions. A principle value is a foundation upon which other values and measures of integrity are based.

Your customers, employees and business associates will not ignore your values when taking fundamental decisions that will make or mar your business.

Therefore,if you must build your business foundation and must never forget to THINK VALUE, like the Jains of India and Quakers I wrote about in https://sunkanmivaughan.com/?p=91 ,you must never miss any of these 7 stages of ‘Think Value” ;

a. create value.

b. deliver value.

c. exchange(buy and sell) value.

d. protect value.

e. promote value.

f. project value.

g. sustain value.

Each of these 7 steps has its significant roles played in solidifying your business foundation and in my subsequent blogposts, I will take you through each of them and how each stage is very relevant to your business startup and eventual survival.

“Born into waste yet they refuse that their lives come to waste”

I read the above quotation from “Dharavi’s Diary” calling for a global action in the development of India’s largest slum-Dharavi; a community that thrives by recycling millions of wastes from all over the world into profits.

The “Dharavi’s Diary” writer saw a slum yet could discover and grab the opportunity for development and production of life-impacting documentary film.

Like the writer of “Dharavi’s Diary”, Bill Gates, the famous founder of Microsoft, in his book, “The Road Ahead”, stated that that “seeing the large Computers made by IBM, he knew it would be difficult to carry such large computers around, consequently,there is tremendous opportunity for the personal computer industry”.It’s such “eyes for opportunity” in the challenge of moving large computers around for use despite the significant relevance of computers that is the single most significant business opportunity that made Bill Gates one of the leading lights in the global PC industry and help him retain his top echelon position of the nouveau rich on the Forbes List year after year!

I grew up learning of the account of a tourist who had once visited a community where people walk barefoot and that single “picture” led that tourist to start a footwear industry in that community. In 2014, the assumed lack of opportunity isn’t as a result of the dearth of opportunity but largely because most of us have been busy doing “Oversight”.The Oxford Advanced Dictionary, 6th edition aptly defined ‘Oversight’ as ‘the fact of making a mistake because you failed to do something or notice something’.

You may have missed on great tremendous business opportunity in 2014 because you made the mistake of ‘oversight’ and very valuable opportunity passed you by.

The focus of this write up is to explain to you how to get opportunities this year,the reason why you permitted opportunities to escape your attention and assist you understand that opportunities in 2015, like past years, will come in different forms, colors and location.

 Let’s start with forms.

 I will like you to take your mind back to the default image of the Devil as a fiery-looking horn bearing figure. This artist’s impression of the devil isn’t in tune with how the devil operates in reality. The devil knows that except he appears attractive and successfully elegant, it would be difficult to attract the attention of anybody and lure someone from the right focus or path.

I learnt this from my experience from temptations that I have overcome and those temptations I got ensnared in.The ‘irony of the devil’ can also be found in the ‘form’ business opportunities present themselves to you in reality.

Some opportunities in 2015 will come in the form of job loss, disappointments and betrayal, salary reduction, income delay etc and such ‘unpleasant circumstances’ hold the opportunity for you if you have the right understanding.

This may just be what you need to follow that business lead, keep up that major appointment, rekindle strained relationship, read a very valuable book like my”1000+ Practical Business Ideas and Directory of Money Sources” you have kept on postponing! What if your opportunity comes in the ‘form of complacency’? You must be fully aware that, regardless of your present comfortable status, 2015 will still offer you great opportunities and it’s high time you start thinking howyou can get  legitimate and profitable returns on your idle funds in the bank, properties, wonderful insight and expertise(you can start working on writing a book or organizing training using your superior experience and expertise of a particular field as the main raw material),contacts and tremendous goodwill from people and relationships you have nurtured and invest in.

You must grab all the opportunities that come your way in 2015.

What about colors of business opportunity?

In High School Physics,I was taught that ‘colour is the light reflected by an object perceived by sight’.

To see the different opportunities in 2015, you must raise your level of perception.

 From your relationships (your success depends on the association you keep and the books you read) to your ability to question every information that you get and avoid “forming busy” while opportunities escape you by.

You must appear radiant and radiate the color of confidence in transparent honesty even in little tasks so that you can be given greater opportunities. I will be frequently providing valuable information to do your self-audit as the year rolls out fully.

If you have a product or brand, it’s time to take a second look at your packaging.It must give out colors that catches the eye of your targeted audience. Stop “dulling yourself”!

Finally, location is going to count in 2015.If you are constantly changing your physical, emotional and psychological location before you can decipher opportunities, you are unstable and you need to start preparing your mind that the opportunités in 2015 will be achieved if you are appropriately positioned in your thoughts, words and deeds.

You must resist the temptation of immediate self-gratificatuon and ensure you pursue any ray of opportunity for business and financial growth. You can not do that if you remain the same way you think, act and talked in 2014! If you do so, you will lose a larger picture of the opportunities in 2015.

This year is yours for the taking!Welcome to 2015.

Sunkanmi Vaughan is the author of the authoritative and most comprehensive business opportunity handbook “1000+ Practical Business Ideas and Directory of Money Sources“.