Besides the fact that I didn’t watch the movie 50 shades of grey after some negative reviews, I still chose to title this article my 50 shades of income. One question I get asked a lot of times is, ‘How can I be a millionaire in Zimbabwe?’ Iam certainly not a millionaire myself and this could be one reason you should not read this article, but the interviews I did revealed what I would like to coin my 50 sheds of becoming a millionaire in Zimbabwe.

What most of these successful business people in Zimbabwe seem to agree upon is that opportunities are always disguised as problems which can simply be unearthed by just listening to the complains people make from the daily conversations. I always here people complain about electricity, clean water, traffic jams, bad network, expensive television viewership, road potholes, moral decay in youths, increase in crime and increase in infidelity amongst couples to mention but a few. Let’s try to evaluation the last point to come up with its 50 shades of income in Zimbabwe. The increase in infidelity can have many income flows. Marriage counseling is one angle. One can conduct couples seminars or a television show amongst other things. One can even go as far as writing a book with titles like, ‘Deleting divorce from your marriage’ and ‘How to survive a divorce emotionally and financially’ or ‘The five steps to divorce and how to avoid them.’ These are just my suggestions.

The next stage is look for a product or service to combine it with. Divorce happens after people get married. Instead, you could combine marriage with divorce and come up with prevention structures like pre-marriage counseling and ideas like ‘50 things to know before you decide to settle down’ can be compacted into a book. After combining, there are so many stages a product passes through which may end up being products of their own. You can subtract the physical part and virtualize everything, thus those who may not be in a favourable geographical location can reach you through skype, Viber or WhatsApp call.

This was just an example but after you have listed down the problems in Zimbabwe and picking only one then come up with models of solutions to that particular problem. Finally, redesign or repackage the solution into a product before asking yourself the following questions. Please note, this process goes through 21 proven stages which we use on our clients. Back to the questions you should ask.

• Can I sell this product to 1 person for $1,000,000?
  

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  Big Brain Zimbabwe Product $5/disk

• Can I sell this product to 10 people for $100,000?
• Can I sell this product to 100 people for $10,000?
• Can I sell this product to 1,000 people for $1,000?
• Can I sell this product to 10,000 people for $100?
• Can I sell this product to 100,000 people for $10?
• Can I sell this product to 1,000,000 people for $1?

The product needs to go through the phase we discussed above on the divorce example. The product can take many form from a good, service or consulting hours. The next important phase especially when you are starting is to ditch the top three or four lines above. One thing I usually teach start-ups in our classes is, ‘to ditch the big hit idea.’ The big hit idea is usually a disaster. Millionaires in Zimbabwe became millionaires from simple things not from a big hit idea. The few big hit millionaires had to go through a very painful process which you may fail to replicate despite you following in their footsteps. A good example is how Strive Masiyiwa started Econet. Ride on already existing models or business spaces. By a business space, I mean either existing channels, products, networks, researches etc. Do not reinvent the wheel. Pimp it. Take a cue from companies like WhatsApp. They didn’t need to create a new mobile network channel but to ride on the already existing platforms. You may not need to create your own android software but create programs to ride on android to solve the problems we have identified above.

Using the revenue maximizing model, you need to sell 167,000 birds to become a millionaire in Zimbabwe if you are in the chickens or poultry business. If that is your annual goal, you will need to be selling approximately 14,000 chickens a month. Now you can see it’s possible. A person with fowl runs that house about 20,000 birds will soon be able to replicate this model. You could do this with another example of Potato farming in Zimbabwe. One needs 10,000 pockets to make one million dollars in Zimbabwe. Please note we are using the revenue and not the profit model. Your next question is, how many hectares do I need to get 10,000 pockets of potatoes in Zimbabwe?

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commercial rabbit farming in Zimbabwe book sales at $15.00/copy

If it’s a book you have authored, I have heard teachers complain about lack of relevant or current literature to suit the changing curricular and socio economic environment. Writing a book that becomes a primary or high school recommended text is one way to make you a millionaire. Selling the books in only one of the ten provinces in Zimbabwe may be more than enough to help you reach the million dollar mark. Academic books costs an average of $20.00 a copy and you will need to sell only fifty thousand copies. All you need is for the numbers to be right. One of my extended mentors once said, if you want to venture into making burgers, all you need is a hungry crowd. I hope this article will inspire you to discover your own 50 shades to becoming a millionaire in Zimbabwe. Request to speak to one of our consultants and let them guide you in developing your product into a master piece.

And as always, to your continued success.