Starting a business can be exciting. But what keeps it alive when the excitement wears off?
The makeup artist and entrepreneur has built businesses across Nigeria's beauty space, including Flawless Faces by Jane, Nuban Beauty and Luxe Braids Nigeria, while also serving as founder and CEO of Peach House Lagos.
Her perspective highlights a part of entrepreneurship that is often hidden behind polished social-media images: building a sustainable business requires much more than having a good product or becoming popular.
A founder can have a strong personal brand, thousands of followers and a product people like, but none of those things automatically guarantee that a business will survive.
Owners still has to pay attention to the customers.
Owners has to monitor the money.
Owners has to make sure employees are doing what they are supposed to do.
Business has to notice when sales begin falling, when customers stop returning or when a product is no longer meeting expectations.
Jane Ogu's emphasis on showing up becomes important.Showing up is not necessarily about sitting in the office every day. It means remaining sufficiently involved to understand what is happening inside the company and making decisions before small problems become expensive ones.
One of the biggest challenges for a growing entrepreneur is people.As a business expands, the founder cannot personally perform every task. Employees have to be hired, trained and trusted.Perhaps delegation does not mean abandoning responsibility.
The owner still needs systems for accountability, quality control and communication.
Jane has previously spoken about manpower challenges in running a beauty business, highlighting the difficulty of finding people who understand and share a founder's vision.
This is why building a business eventually requires the entrepreneur to move from simply doing the work to building a team capable of doing the work well.
Another reality entrepreneurs have to confront is that attracting a customer once is not the same as building a business.
A customer who buys today but never returns may create a sale, but a customer who trusts the brand enough to keep coming back creates something much more valuable: repeat business.
With current trends entrepreneurs have to pay attention to the customer experience.
Was the product good?
Was the service consistent?
Was the customer treated well?
Was the problem resolved when something went wrong?
Businesses that answer those questions honestly have a better chance of turning occasional buyers into loyal customers.
A business can look successful online and still struggle financially.
Expensive branding, impressive offices, large launches and social-media visibility do not automatically mean a company is profitable.
Entrepreneurs have to understand the money moving through the business.
That means knowing what is coming in, what is going out, what the business owes, what it needs to pay employees and suppliers, and how much money is actually available for growth.
Revenue is not the same thing as profit, and profit is not the same thing as cash available to spend.
The glamorous side of entrepreneurship is easy to post.The difficult part is repetition.
Opening when business is slow.Answering customers when you are tired.Fixing mistakes.Training staff again.Improving a product.Reviewing expenses.Following up on opportunities.Showing up the next day and doing it again.
Consistency is often what separates a business that has a moment from a business that develops staying power.
Jane's own career illustrates how a beauty professional can expand beyond providing a service into products, education and multiple business ventures. Her work with Nuban Beauty, for example, moved her from makeup artistry into beauty-product entrepreneurship.
There is an important stage entrepreneurs ask
“How do I make this business work?”
“How do I make this business work even when I am not personally doing everything?”
Jane's message about showing up points to a broader truth about entrepreneurship.
You cannot build a durable business only when you feel motivated.The business has to be maintained when sales are high and when they are low. It needs attention when everyone is praising the brand and when nobody is talking about it.
It needs customers to return, employees to perform, finances to remain under control and the founder to keep making decisions.
Ultimately, entrepreneurship is not just about starting something.
It is about staying responsible for what you started long enough to give it a chance to become bigger than you.
As an entrepreneurs, what is harder: getting the business started or staying consistent enough to keep it alive?
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