Latest / Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint / Capital Solutions for Female Entrepreneurs: Kelly's Catering Case Study

Transcript

Capital Solutions for Female Entrepreneurs: Kelly's Catering Case Study · Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint

• 0:01
  Hello and welcome to the show. Today I'm chilling at the car
• 0:03
  wash. Well, of course the car is
• 0:05
  getting washed so expect to hear some noise in the background.
• 0:09
  Let's see. OK, so today I want us to look
• 0:11
  for ideas for raising capital. And the reason why is because on
• 0:15
  my radio show, someone called in her name is Kelly from Coolje,
• 0:19
  and she had a business in the catering space.
• 0:25
  Imagine it's quite a coincidence that the first episode I did for
• 0:29
  Raising Capital also happened to be someone who was in the
• 0:32
  catering space. But then she is a student in
• 0:34
  Benway State University. So, well, if you listen to that
• 0:38
  episode, then we'll be talking about pretty much the same sort
• 0:40
  of thing, except that for Kelly, I had some specific resources
• 0:44
  that I wanted her to try out at the end of the day, which were
• 0:47
  kind of different from the resources that I recommended for
• 0:50
  the lady from Benway State. But if you've listened to that
• 0:54
  particular episode, that's the catering in Benin Estate and
• 0:56
  then you're listening to this one, the catering in Abuja.
• 1:00
  I, the overwhelming message I hope you take out of this is
• 1:03
  just to see that resources are available.
• 1:07
  If you want to go through the grant route, just know that
• 1:10
  resources are available. You just have to put in some,
• 1:13
  some work because when it comes to grants, you're going to have
• 1:15
  to formally apply. So these are the sorts of things
• 1:18
  that we're going to be discussing today on the podcast.
• 1:21
  Now, before we get into the meat of the session, I'd like to say
• 1:24
  give a shout out to Clement Wisdom.
• 1:27
  He's a listener of the show. He left a comment on Spotify and
• 1:31
  that was the episode where I was talking about was one of those
• 1:34
  WhatsApp episodes anyway, about how we can get Better Business
• 1:38
  results if our messages are much more concise and if we use
• 1:41
  strong call to actions so that when people see our WhatsApp
• 1:45
  messages, this specific thing that they have to do.
• 1:48
  So, yeah, he enjoyed the episode, but at the end of his
• 1:52
  comments, he mentioned that the entrepreneur in question, that's
• 1:56
  Zenani, who is the CEO, the brains behind me best foods.
• 2:01
  Again, if you only check Zenani out, it is Mee and then best
• 2:05
  BEST, but written together as one word.
• 2:08
  So me best foods, MEEBEST and then foods.
• 2:13
  So if you only check out Zenani's work, you know, that's
• 2:15
  that's how Instagram handles so you can see her stuff.
• 2:18
  So Clement wisdom mentioned that Zenani would be better off
• 2:23
  creating her own website instead of using a website from bumper.
• 2:26
  Oh, and by the way, bumper is spelled to BUMPA.
• 2:30
  And I gave a caveat in that episode that if you want to
• 2:33
  check out bumper, don't just rely on bumper because, you
• 2:37
  know, I said, so you like do your own research, you know, as
• 2:40
  in me and Zenani were just in Aspire were friends.
• 2:43
  So you know, you guys are my friends as well, so I'm just
• 2:46
  giving you gist. I'm not recommending that it's a
• 2:48
  service you use. So anyway, Clement Wisdom
• 2:51
  mentioned that Bumper has some limitations and so Zenani would
• 2:55
  be better off setting up our own website.
• 2:57
  So what I told Clements to do last in the Spotify comments
• 3:02
  anyway, because since it's Spotify, you know, it's not like
• 3:04
  it's what's up. So I couldn't just reply and
• 3:06
  continue the conversation. So what I put there in the
• 3:08
  comments, and I hope that Clement Wisdom, I hope you've
• 3:11
  seen the comments or I hope you're listening to this
• 3:12
  particular episode. So what I suggested to him was,
• 3:16
  since you know, that bumper has some limitations, why not just
• 3:19
  record an audio message? Just the way I'm recording this
• 3:21
  message. You see, I'm I'm here at the car
• 3:23
  washer. I'm just chilling.
• 3:24
  I just wip out the phone. Make this recording.
• 3:26
  You can do the same thing. Don't worry about audio quality.
• 3:29
  Just make sure that what you're saying makes sense that you
• 3:31
  know, if you say that bumper has some limitations, I expect that
• 3:34
  you're familiar with, you know, websites and these sorts of
• 3:36
  things. So just send an audio message
• 3:38
  saying that these are the limitations of Bumper.
• 3:42
  The limitations are 123456, you know, and based on my own
• 3:45
  professional opinion, I think Zenati Zenani will be better off
• 3:47
  making our own websites or doing a website that would accomplish,
• 3:52
  you know, 123456, you know, just that kind of thing.
• 3:55
  So make an audio message. Don't worry, it doesn't have to
• 3:59
  be too long. Even if you go 1015 minutes,
• 4:01
  it's OK, but just make an audio message.
• 4:03
  Share your opinion because I've been trying to get some some
• 4:08
  usage generator content, you know, some some of you
• 4:11
  listeners, you know, it's it's I'm curious.
• 4:14
  I want to hear what you guys think on certain sorts of
• 4:16
  things. And you know, the more
• 4:17
  perspectives that we have, the better.
• 4:19
  So climate wisdom, if you're listening creative voice, not a
• 4:24
  voice note on WhatsApp, just record an MP3 on your phone and
• 4:28
  then send it to me on WhatsApp. The number is 08064662140.
• 4:35
  Country code is +234. Just in case, Clement, you are
• 4:39
  not Nigerian, so send me the audio note unless you're your
• 4:42
  perspective with other people over here on the forum.
• 4:46
  And just know that I'm not opposed to, you know, people
• 4:49
  reaching out to say, I agree with this, I disagree with this.
• 4:52
  Or can you explain these things better?
• 4:54
  Because we've we get wonderful podcast ideas.
• 4:59
  And in fact, the first series I did on how to sell on LinkedIn,
• 5:02
  I think was close to 6 or maybe 8 episodes was precisely because
• 5:06
  somebody reached out to say, look, this thing you're saying
• 5:08
  about selling on LinkedIn, I agree on this.
• 5:11
  I don't agree on this. And that's what inspired the
• 5:13
  other episodes. So shout out to Climate Wisdom.
• 5:16
  Thank you very much for listening to the show.
• 5:18
  And now let's address Kelly from Pooja's question.
• 5:21
  But like I said, if you listen to the episode where I was
• 5:24
  talking to the lady in Benue State, the one I called Wonder
• 5:27
  Woman about how to raise capital for business, it's pretty much
• 5:30
  the same thing. But if it's your first time
• 5:32
  listening to the show, yeah, let's head straight into it.
• 5:37
  Now this particular lady, Lady Kelly, she had, this is a second
• 5:41
  time round in the business. The first time she thinks the
• 5:43
  business didn't work because of the poor location, was a faulty
• 5:46
  location. Now, I was going to ask some
• 5:48
  more questions like how do you know it's a faulty location?
• 5:50
  Because you know, sometimes we have problems in our business,
• 5:53
  but it's not necessarily the location.
• 5:55
  Sometimes the location is poor or is OK or is manageable, but
• 6:00
  the problem is that maybe we are bad at generating publicity and
• 6:04
  generating attention. All that we were good at
• 6:06
  generating publicity and attention and people are coming
• 6:09
  into the store, but then we are bad at conversion.
• 6:12
  Conversion just means how you get the person to take the next
• 6:14
  step. So people are coming to the
• 6:16
  store, but we don't know how to get them to sit down to try out
• 6:19
  the menu or even if they do that, we don't know how to get
• 6:21
  them to come back again. So sometimes it's not just as
• 6:25
  simple as saying this location is not good or this building is
• 6:29
  not good, or my branding is not good or my, you know, one
• 6:34
  particular thing is the problem. Sometimes it's a bit more
• 6:36
  complex than saying there's this one thing.
• 6:39
  But before I asked her, you know, how do you know what's the
• 6:41
  location? She now mentioned that, oh,
• 6:42
  she's in a good space and now that is plenty of foot traffic.
• 6:46
  So I just let that thing slide. So as long as now she's in a
• 6:49
  place where there's plenty of food, foot traffic, that's good.
• 6:52
  So she says there's plenty of food, traffic, people are coming
• 6:54
  to the shop and it's all good. The problem now is that at the
• 6:59
  end of the day, at the end of the week, she doesn't have
• 7:01
  enough money to replenish the stock.
• 7:04
  So what she wants to do is she wants to raise capital because
• 7:07
  there's plenty of demand, but she is not meeting demand now.
• 7:12
  I think there's another problem there, but you know, I'll talk
• 7:14
  about that later. But let me go straight to
• 7:16
  answering her question. So now the options that are
• 7:19
  available for business finance, I've said it in the Wonder Woman
• 7:22
  episode, the K try in Abuja, sorry, the K try in Bennu State
• 7:26
  and you know it's going to be the same no matter who asked me
• 7:28
  the question. The options are available
• 7:30
  basically are for in my own opinion, there's bootstrap,
• 7:33
  there is loan, there is equity investment and there's grant.
• 7:36
  Let me repeat and then I'll define.
• 7:38
  So there's bootstrap, there is loan, there's equity investment
• 7:42
  and then there is a grant. So bootstrap just means you're
• 7:48
  funding this business from your savings.
• 7:51
  Talk to Momsy, talk to Popsy, collect some cash here, you
• 7:53
  know, save some money here, you know, you know, this kind of
• 7:56
  thing that charges, put the money together, that's
• 7:58
  bootstrapping. Bootstrapping also involves
• 8:01
  using the money that comes from the business that you're doing
• 8:05
  to finance the business. Now, for some people, given
• 8:08
  their circumstances, I recommend bootstrapping because it's the
• 8:11
  easiest way to raise finance. So bootstrapping in this case
• 8:14
  would mean that the money she's getting from selling rice,
• 8:18
  beans, spaghetti, cupcakes, you know, everything, take the
• 8:21
  profits and then plow it back into the business.
• 8:23
  That will also be bootstrapping. And This is why I think there's
• 8:27
  a problem in the business. If you set up your business
• 8:30
  right and if you crunch your numbers well, you shouldn't have
• 8:35
  this problem of you're having lots of customers, but they're
• 8:38
  running out of cash. So my first opinion was to tell
• 8:41
  her was like, you know, sister, I think you need to raise your
• 8:43
  prices. You really do.
• 8:46
  Because if you did your calculations well, house rent
• 8:51
  plus, I mean office rent plus cost of rice, plus cost of
• 8:55
  beans, plus cost of eggs, plus cost of everything at the very
• 8:58
  least as you're selling, you know, 11 cupcake or 11 plate of
• 9:02
  rice or you know, 11 plate of fried eggs and was I think fried
• 9:12
  potato and fried eggs. At the end of the month, it
• 9:15
  should all tally up that it should be a profit there.
• 9:17
  So the first thing that I recommended to how was to raise
• 9:19
  prices. Lots of people are scared to
• 9:22
  raise their prices and I understand.
• 9:25
  I'm there. I've been with you guys.
• 9:27
  I started off as a wedding photographer.
• 9:29
  The first job I did, I charged 50K.
• 9:32
  And to be honest, when the person I agreed to the 50 Ki
• 9:34
  felt like I was on top of the world and trying to raise prices
• 9:42
  from that poultry 50K, it took a lot.
• 9:45
  Eventually I did. But the thing was, I the next
• 9:47
  person I spoke to and I said, OK, 400K.
• 9:50
  So yeah, maybe the gap from 50 to 400, especially when I don't
• 9:53
  have a justifiable track record, was too much.
• 9:56
  But The thing is, I'm just trying to say that I understand
• 9:58
  the angst and I understand the fear when people don't want to
• 10:00
  raise their prices. But to be honest, the easiest
• 10:02
  level that you have for business growth is to raise your prices.
• 10:06
  Because in most cases you raise your prices, some people
• 10:09
  disappear, but then you find out that you're having less number
• 10:13
  of customers, but you're making more money and you now have more
• 10:18
  free time to dedicated to other things.
• 10:21
  So please be brave enough to give it a try.
• 10:25
  If you'd like some help with that, then I've given out my
• 10:27
  contact details. The number is 08064662140,
• 10:33
  country code +234. Hit me up on WhatsApp.
• 10:35
  Let's have the conversation. If you're one of those people
• 10:38
  who's thinking, yeah, I need to raise my prices, but I'm afraid,
• 10:42
  let's see how we can come up with a plan.
• 10:44
  So that's my recommendation. Raise your prices so that you
• 10:47
  can bootstrap. Because if you're running your
• 10:49
  business at a loss, there's a problem somewhere.
• 10:52
  And I really think it means that your prices cannot justify you
• 10:56
  being in the business. Now, there are some problems
• 10:59
  with raising prices depending on where you are, because you're in
• 11:01
  a place where all the other caterers around you are selling
• 11:04
  one plate of rates at 25, you might feel as if, OK, if
• 11:08
  everybody's selling the one at 25, if I raise my own price to
• 11:12
  27, you know, I'll lose customers.
• 11:14
  So, you know, there are lots of things to consider on a case by
• 11:16
  case basis. But raising your price, easiest
• 11:19
  thing to do so that you can now bootstrap, you can finance your
• 11:22
  business from the profits that are coming from the business.
• 11:26
  Now the reason why I recommend bootstrapping for most people in
• 11:29
  the beginning is because the other two, which is loan and
• 11:33
  equity, the says, it says scratch my back.
• 11:36
  I scratch your back and play. So for loan, loan does mean
• 11:39
  somebody gives you the money, but you promise that you're
• 11:41
  going to pay them the money back and you're going to drop
• 11:45
  interest, you're going to pay extra.
• 11:47
  Now the problem with the Nigerian environment is, you
• 11:49
  know, hyperinflation, blah, blah, blah.
• 11:51
  So interest rates high, if you go to the bank, the interest
• 11:55
  rate is high, not to even talk about if you go to the loan
• 11:59
  shark, it'll be easier for you to get money from the
• 12:02
  neighborhood loan shark. But The thing is, those people,
• 12:04
  they will stress your life. And I've heard that some of
• 12:06
  these people can be caught throat like they're gangster,
• 12:09
  like those show up to your office, show up to your house,
• 12:11
  that kind of harassment gangster.
• 12:14
  Although for one of my cousins, when he tried them, what they
• 12:17
  did was I wasn't able to pay. They send text messages out, you
• 12:20
  know, very embarrassing text messages.
• 12:22
  I received one of them. My mom, she received them.
• 12:24
  My aunties received them. I don't know how they were able
• 12:27
  to copy his phone book shop. But anyway, they just sent
• 12:29
  messages out to everybody, you know, really, really
• 12:30
  embarrassing messages. But where was I?
• 12:35
  Basically what I'm just trying to say is that loans are
• 12:36
  expensive. If you go to the bank, it is
• 12:38
  expensive. If you feel like this bank is
• 12:40
  giving me too much stress, let me go to the Neighborhood Loan
• 12:42
  Shack. The neighborhood loan shack is
• 12:45
  even going to charge you more. And then there's a harassing
• 12:48
  harassment thing of somehow do show up at your house, be
• 12:51
  harassing you, harassing your wife, harassing your kids.
• 12:54
  And then the whole thing of the text messages just, you know,
• 12:56
  blowing up everybody's phone and sending embarrassing messages
• 13:00
  about you. So loans expensive then equity.
• 13:05
  Equity is where somebody gives you money.
• 13:07
  But then the analysis that look, you and me, we're partners.
• 13:10
  I'm giving this 500K for the business and because I'm
• 13:13
  dropping 500K, look, we're going this thing 5050.
• 13:16
  So your profits are my profits, you know.
• 13:18
  So the way I advise you is that, look, when it comes to equity
• 13:21
  investment, it's a marriage, it's a long term marriage.
• 13:24
  So I need to decide if I'm collecting this person's money,
• 13:26
  can I be married to this person in a business sense?
• 13:29
  So now of course, the definitions of these things are
• 13:32
  much more complicated, much more complex, but I'm just trying to
• 13:36
  come up with very simple everyday man, everyday woman
• 13:40
  definition so that people can understand and get one time so
• 13:43
  you understand what you're getting into from the beginning.
• 13:45
  So simply equity just means the person is dropping money, but
• 13:48
  they want to share your business.
• 13:49
  They share the business also means they will have some
• 13:51
  control. The person will be able to say
• 13:53
  that look, I don't think you should be selling chicken.
• 13:57
  Again, chicken is too expensive. Sell fish, sell ice fish.
• 14:01
  And for you, that might be off brand.
• 14:03
  You might be thinking, no, ice fish is too.
• 14:07
  What's the word? OK, I don't even eat fish, so I
• 14:09
  don't even know what people think of ice fish these days.
• 14:11
  But I know that back when I was in primary school, people used
• 14:14
  to think like beef and chicken was more middle class than if
• 14:18
  you're eating ice fish, that is more like on the poor end of the
• 14:20
  spectrum. So I'm not sure what people
• 14:23
  think about ice fish these days. But yeah, you can find yourself
• 14:26
  in that scenario. You're thinking, look, I want to
• 14:28
  be selling beef and chicken. In fact, everyone to add steak
• 14:32
  to the menu so that we can apply.
• 14:34
  Sorry, attract people that have much more, you know, refined
• 14:37
  taste and then your business person is saying no, we should
• 14:40
  be doing high fish and people are quarreling up and down
• 14:42
  because you now collected 500K or 1M for somebody and the
• 14:46
  person is now your business partner 5050.
• 14:49
  So that's equity. Then another Ave. available is a
• 14:53
  grant. A grant just means free money.
• 14:55
  It means not dash them, dash you.
• 14:58
  However, because a grant is free money, it doesn't mean that
• 15:02
  there are no restrictions to it. Usually there are some
• 15:05
  considerations there. There are some eligibility
• 15:08
  considerations. So they don't give everybody.
• 15:11
  And so because of that, for Kelly, the options that I gave
• 15:13
  to her were options that relate specifically to female
• 15:17
  entrepreneurs. So that's some of these things
• 15:19
  that the deal might be sweet. And then you go there and they
• 15:21
  say, oh, no, sorry. We only give it to women who are
• 15:23
  between the ages of 18 and 23, but you're a man and you're 48
• 15:26
  years old, so you don't qualify. So there's eligibility and then
• 15:31
  there's usually reporting restrictions on these sorts of
• 15:34
  things. So that means, yes, we take this
• 15:37
  money, you know, now dash, we dash you, you know, it's all
• 15:39
  free. But every single year for the
• 15:41
  next 5 years, you have to send us photos and videos or reports
• 15:45
  to say this is how we spent it, This is what we do, This is what
• 15:48
  we did. So you can see that is a dash,
• 15:50
  but it's not entirely, it's not entirely dash, dash, dash like
• 15:56
  free like that. So there's some some other
• 16:00
  considerations, some restrictions you will have to
• 16:02
  abide by. So my recommendation to Kelly
• 16:04
  and another person who is considering grant is sit down
• 16:06
  and read the document properly and have an honest conversation
• 16:11
  with yourself. These things that are asking me
• 16:12
  to comply with, can I comply with that thing?
• 16:15
  And then of course, it also involves a lot of work because
• 16:18
  since grant is free money, it is a dash.
• 16:21
  You best believe that everybody's applying for these
• 16:23
  grants. So you're going to have to be
• 16:25
  good at writing reports, writing proposals, writing what is it
• 16:30
  called, grant application, you know, all these sorts of things.
• 16:34
  But don't worry. The good thing is with all the
• 16:37
  AI tools that we have available now, you know, Gemini ChatGPT,
• 16:42
  you know, we, it's now it's workable.
• 16:44
  In the old days, like 10-15 years ago, you'd have to do all
• 16:48
  the work yourself or you'd have to go and look for a consultant
• 16:51
  who specializes in these sorts of things.
• 16:54
  But now I'm just saying, I'm not recommending that you should not
• 16:58
  use consultants to help you write your grant proposals.
• 17:01
  But I'm just saying that if you're broke, like if you're
• 17:03
  dead broke, you can just buy, let's say 15.
• 17:08
  If you buy like 1/5 data on AT Salat, I think they have like a
• 17:12
  like a four gig plan. So if you have like 1500 now you
• 17:17
  buy, you get a four gig plan for the month.
• 17:20
  You can watch a few YouTube videos.
• 17:22
  So from YouTube and then plus Gemini and then all those
• 17:24
  things, you should be able to figure out how you can put
• 17:28
  together a convincing grant proposal.
• 17:33
  So since where was I? So since I had mentioned grants,
• 17:39
  now I wanted to give her some grant opportunities, some grants
• 17:43
  that she can apply for. So I did some small research,
• 17:46
  but this is not in depth research.
• 17:47
  So I mentioned to Kelly and I'm also mentioning to you guys all
• 17:50
  these things I'm saying now because I'm saying it, don't
• 17:52
  take it. That is gospel truth.
• 17:54
  I'm not affiliated to these people.
• 17:56
  I just did a small Google search just to see what's out there.
• 17:59
  So you can also do a Google search as well to see what's
• 18:01
  available in your city. So you can check, you know,
• 18:04
  grants female based entrepreneurs, you know who are
• 18:06
  here if you happen to be in more here and throw it in Google and
• 18:09
  then see what comes up, you know, so Google will show a
• 18:12
  number of options, maybe like 10.
• 18:14
  You look through the list, see the place that is closest to
• 18:17
  you, the place that has physical office that you can go to and
• 18:19
  make inquiries or the place that has phone number that you can
• 18:22
  call and make inquiries, but or e-mail and make inquiries.
• 18:25
  But either way, you can do some research.
• 18:29
  So what I found was flourish Africa.
• 18:31
  That was one flourish Africa. Then I also found African Women
• 18:35
  Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum as very long.
• 18:39
  So just use the initials. The initials are AWIEF, African
• 18:43
  Women Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum.
• 18:46
  Then there's also she leads Africa, I repeat, she leads
• 18:50
  Africa. These are people who are making
• 18:52
  grants for female based businesses.
• 18:54
  And then there's also the Nigerian Youth Investment Fund
• 18:57
  which also has grants for female entrepreneurs.
• 19:00
  And then there is sorry, one moment, OK, a notification was
• 19:07
  coming through my phone. Just wanted to be sure was
• 19:09
  nothing urgent. Then there's also Faith
• 19:12
  Foundation Legos. Now I mentioned to her that I
• 19:14
  have done some consulting work for Faith Foundation Lagos
• 19:17
  because Faith Foundation Lagos, they they offer, they offer
• 19:23
  resources for entrepreneurs. So I've done some consulting
• 19:27
  work with them, I've done some training work with them.
• 19:29
  And recently Faith Foundation partnered with the OCIF, that's
• 19:32
  the Orange Corners Innovation Fund or something like that.
• 19:36
  And I think that they are from the royal family in Denmark
• 19:40
  Abbey, never Netherlands, Denmark.
• 19:42
  Sorry, forgive me, I'm poor in geography when I know that Faith
• 19:45
  Foundation has collaborated with the OCIF.
• 19:47
  So just Google OCIF Orange Corners Innovation Fund.
• 19:50
  So Netherlands, Denmark, I don't know if they're different or
• 19:53
  they're the same place. Forgive my ignorance.
• 19:56
  So they partnered with that program where they have trained
• 19:59
  entrepreneurs in Nigeria. I know that they have done like
• 20:03
  Lagos edition. I think they have done like
• 20:05
  Ocean Edition, I can't remember which other states, but
• 20:11
  basically they take people, they train people, they give you
• 20:13
  startup capital and you know, stuff like that.
• 20:16
  So those kind of options are available as well.
• 20:18
  Now fortunately, Faith Foundation is based in Lagos, so
• 20:23
  somehow all the kind of things that Faith Foundation and bodies
• 20:28
  like that do end up being more like a Lagos kind of thing.
• 20:31
  But all that Faith Foundation is crucial.
• 20:32
  Just go and have a look because you never know, maybe they have
• 20:35
  some Abuja thing that they're working on.
• 20:39
  But also because Faith Foundation, even though they
• 20:41
  don't give, give grants to women entrepreneurs, they, they give
• 20:47
  loans and the loans are not as bad as bank loans.
• 20:51
  Then there's another program, the First Bank of Nigeria Gem
• 20:54
  Fund. And the reason why I found that
• 20:57
  one interesting is because they claim that they do single digit
• 20:59
  loans, but I didn't call them up to find out.
• 21:02
  Like when they say single digit loan, does it means that the
• 21:05
  interest rate is not going to pass 9% as in single digit or
• 21:09
  not the only give single digit loans like they can lend out,
• 21:12
  you know, 20K30K, you know, those sorts of things.
• 21:14
  So any I don't know, but that's not just what a simple Google
• 21:18
  search and threw up. But bottom line, what I'm trying
• 21:21
  to say is this that with Google and with AI and stuff like that,
• 21:25
  there is you don't have to be depressed.
• 21:28
  You know, we, we actually can sit down on our phones and our
• 21:31
  computers and then come up with a couple of workable solutions
• 21:34
  and like, what have you got to lose?
• 21:36
  If there's a phone number, call up the phone number and you
• 21:38
  know, explain the situation and see if there are any resources
• 21:45
  that you can take advantage of with these particular
• 21:46
  organizations. So that's it pretty much.
• 21:51
  So if you listen to the one oh man episode, that's the lady who
• 21:54
  was in then we state the caterer, you can see that the
• 21:57
  resources that I gave for her are different from the resources
• 21:59
  that I gave for Kelly. But either we shall, we can find
• 22:03
  resources, we can make these things work.
• 22:07
  But please, please, please, please, please, Please remember,
• 22:11
  if you are in the same sort of situation that Kelly is in,
• 22:14
  doesn't matter whether you're a caterer or you're a wedding
• 22:17
  photographer or you're an architect or whether you sell
• 22:20
  cement. Ordinarily, if you did your
• 22:23
  numbers correctly, the money for your office shop, the money for
• 22:27
  your supplies, the money for employees, the money for
• 22:29
  everything at the end of the month, at the very least, you
• 22:33
  should be breaking even. Breaking even just means I no
• 22:37
  gain, but I no lose as in like I didn't suffer.
• 22:43
  Break even is not what we should be aiming for because break even
• 22:47
  means that you're not putting any money in your pocket.
• 22:50
  But I'm just saying that at the very least, worst case scenario,
• 22:55
  last last, you should be breaking even.
• 22:57
  If you are not breaking even. I'm begging you, the easiest
• 23:01
  thing to do is to raise your prices before you start
• 23:06
  exploring all these other things.
• 23:07
  Because if you're not breaking even, it means that your unit
• 23:10
  economics is poor. Unit economic means when you
• 23:14
  look at one particular, when you look at one particular item that
• 23:17
  you produce, one particular client that you consult on, or
• 23:21
  one particular plate of rice that you sell, it means that
• 23:24
  based on that unit, based on that one thing, you are already
• 23:27
  losing money. Now if you have poor unit
• 23:30
  economics are you now go and borrow money, you are borrowing
• 23:34
  money to put on something that has poor unit economics.
• 23:38
  You could be potentially taking money to start wasting the
• 23:42
  money. Or you take an equity partner.
• 23:46
  The person is now 5050. You now take the person's money.
• 23:49
  You're taking equity to now go and pour on poor unit economics
• 23:53
  like you are borrowing money to now throw down the drain
• 23:55
  potentially. Or you go and take a grant, yes,
• 23:58
  even though that one is free money.
• 23:59
  But what's the point of doing all this hard work, writing the
• 24:02
  proposal, write the presentation, you go for an
• 24:04
  interview, you defend everything, they award you the
• 24:07
  money, and then you take the money and now just throw it down
• 24:09
  the hole. Raise your prices, Fix your unit
• 24:13
  economics first, raise your prices before we start exploring
• 24:18
  other things. So that was my heartfelt advice
• 24:21
  to Kelly and my heartfelt advice to anybody listening to the show
• 24:24
  who is in a similar situation. So you are an architect, you're
• 24:29
  getting clients by the end of the month.
• 24:31
  You're like this money self. Where is it?
• 24:33
  I'm not saying this money. Raise your prices.
• 24:37
  All right, so that's it. If you'd love to connect for a
• 24:39
  strategy session for a business audit, or you have questions
• 24:43
  you'd like me to answer, the phone number is 08064662140.
• 24:50
  The country code is +234. You can also connect with me on
• 24:55
  LinkedIn. The name to look for is Tave
• 24:57
  Shima Aidi and then I have a YouTube channel the same name as
• 25:01
  well, Tavishima Ayede. Just check Tavishima Ayede on
• 25:04
  Google. Sorry, I said Google on YouTube
• 25:07
  and you find all the free resources that I have there.
• 25:09
  Currently we have over 1080 something videos on the channel.
• 25:15
  So thank you very much for your time and attention.
• 25:16
  I'll catch you guys at the next episode.