Hidden Profits: How to squeeze more profits from your business

By Jeff Kumekucha

Times are pretty hard for entrepreneurs in the country and getting harder. With the drastic weakening of the Kenya shilling many have found that suddenly their profit margin has been eroded. But they can’t dare just increase prices because doing so will chase away your customers.

And yet if they do nothing they will end up making losses, in some cases huge losses.

So what to do?

The most viable option for you is to squeeze out more profits from your existing customers or from your existing business without increasing prices.

How do you do this exactly?

Let us deal with a specific example here so that the lesson sinks in deep.

A few years back Nation newspapers were faced with the same problem. Prices of fuel to transport their newspapers had risen dramatically at a time when the price of their imported newsprint had shot up because of the weakening of the Kenya shilling. A less creative business would have simply raised the prices of their newspapers and lost hoardes of customers in the process putting the business in a worse situation.

Instead what the company did was to find a very creative way to squeeze out more profits from their business. Now you need to understand that the Nation newspaper is the top seller in East and Cantral Africa because of their distribution system which takes the newspaper to every corner of the country and beyond. The big problem is that when the van that delivers newspapers to a certain place comes back, it returns empty and yet still costs the same it cost on the first trip. Now if only they could figure out a way to make the return trip profitable.

Nation courier services was created. The same can carrying the newspapers would now carry packages and letters and deliver them on the newspaper route. On the way back the same van would carry more packages and letters coming from the newspaper route and destined for the capital city where the newspapers head office is. Pure genius and it worked like magic.

Actually what happened in this case is that the company started a subsidiary business with zero capital. They simply used their existing infrastructure and vehicles for delivering newspapers daily to start a brand new business.

Can you apply the same trick to your business to squeeze out more profits from your existing infrastructure?

Here are a few examples to help you come up with that magical idea that will lift your business to the next level.

Read part 2 of this article.

Even before you read Part 2 you can read about many more specific examples from the Kenyan market and beyond that will help you find hidden profits in your business that you never thought existed. It does not matter what kind of business you are in, whether it is a website or small stall in the market or a high tech computer company, these ideas will impact on your profits and bottom line. Get my regular Free Hidden Profits report NOW.

Mwau’s Car Fired At… From Inside The Car Under Attack

There is such a thing as being overtaken by the times.

I saw this with my late dad towards the end of his well lived tenure on this earth. He was ordinarily a very intelligent man but at one point in his life time literally zoomed past him. The man who at one time was able to import the very latest Toyota Corolla way back in 1966 never managed to use an ATM. Neither could he send a short text message from a cell phone. You could never convince him that these days one can get a decent hotel without cockroaches and dirt on River Road (Kipepeo is a very popular clean magnificent budget hotel for tourists, bang in the middle of River Road) and indeed he would never dream of buying anything downtown beyond Moi Avenue. Interesting because in his early days in Nairobi (in the late 50s) Africans were not allowed beyond River Road and to the better part of town without a special pass. And so he first familiarized himself with the city starting from that dingy part of town.
Indeed this thing of being overtaken by the times started affecting his judgement in other more critical areas of his life. And worst of all we even stopped agreeing on many basic political issues. He loved Mwai Kibaki and in many ways helped me to understand the thinking of this man who more than any other president of the republic has brought the country to the brink of shutting down. My dad helped me see that Kibaki too is a man who has been overtaken by the times in many ways.

The really sad thing is when a person has been overtaken by the times and tries to do something that worked in the 70s but fails and is absolutely puzzled as to why the “clever” thing they have done has failed to work.

We saw retired President Moi in that position during the referendum campaign which ended up in silly decisions that led to the death of innocent Kenyans after an explosion went off at Uhuru park.

And we are seeing it now with John Harun Mwau.

Incidentally the man is about the same age as my dad (difference of about 6 years). Indeed my dad knew him well and warned me years ago (before I became a journalist) about the man’s corrupt ways and dirty deals.

It is now clear that here is a man who has been overtaken by the times. In his days in the police, the police force was very different and very easy to fool. Naturally because they did not have to deal with the kind of crimes they deal with today. And that is why they were able to see right through the stage managed shooting of his car. In fact the police have been bold enough to say that some of the gun shots seemed to have been fired from inside the car that was supossed to be under attack.

But even before the police gave the public information that hardly surprises most Kenyans people already knew that Mwau’s car actually being fired on by real thugs was as likely as Kenyans abandoning the staple dish of Ugali forever. It just can’t happen.

Of course these kinds of stage-managed games used to work very well in the 60s and 70s when Kenyans were generally not that clever and could swallow anything hook line and kitu kidogo. Not any more.

And that is why keen observers are quickly realizing that Mr Mwau is in very serious trouble. To cut a long story short, he has some problems which he needs to solve by convincing the public that his life is in danger from people who want his vast wealth.

Top on that list (according to Mwau) is President Obama of the United States. Which means that his list of suspects who were behind the “attempt on his life” must include President Obama. HILARIOUS, especially when you consider the fact that the so-called killers were so sloppy as to fire most of the bullets through the driver’s door when it is obvious that Mwau sits on the back left of his cars. But admittedly they are probably so advanced that they were able to fire some of the shots from inside the car. This is great stuff for the well-loved comedian Mr Bean is it not?

So who would want to kill Mwau? Seriously...

The movie you must absolutely watch before you die

BREAKING NEWS: Policeman investigation Mwau shooting suddenly dies

Corporal Gerald Waskie who was a detective investigating the gun attack on Kilome MP Harun Mwau’s shot-at-vehicle collapsed and died a few hours ago.

Wasike was attached to the Scenes of Crime department at the Criminal Investigations Department (CID).

Even more puzzling was the way he died. His colleagues say that he just suddenly started bleeding from the nose and mouth before collapsing. He was rushed to the Nairobi Outpatient Clinic but was pronounced dead on arrival. It has been established that the officer was examining Mr Mwau’s Range Rover at the time of the mysterious incident at the Central Police Station in Nairobi.

He was together with his two colleagues and had been assigned the duty of carrying out further and more detailed examination on Mr Mwau’s bullet-ridden Range Rover car.