Monday, 30 April 2007

The juggler

Work
School
Work
Schoo... (Plop!) No, let's try again.. This time we'll put school on top

School
Work
S...(Plop!)

No matter how you try, it's not an easy task juggling work and and school tasks efficiently. Meeting deadlines and demands can bean ardous task and one who is determined to succeed must be prepared to develop the stamina to cope with the demands.

Ok, the moment of truth is over, lets recap the past few weeks where I've been at the mercy of NEPA (Or is it now PHCN, Please Hold Candle Nearby like some people say) and have been unable to write very much.

Before I left, I realised that for the project I had at heart, I would need some serious funding. Just so it's up to standard from day 1. I've seen a lot of Nigerian websites and businesses that have lots of potential but their presentation has been anything but standard. Good customer service for one isn't at all implemented, and one would have to wait in a queue for hours, just to get an answers to an enquiry. I experienced this while waiting in a bank in Lagos. I had to pay some cash in over the counter - Not only were the staff being obviously rude to customers (Telling them to go out of the way etc) but when we finally got to the counter, the staff sitting behind the table completely ignored my greeting! And this was at 10am in the morning. I hate to think how she would have treated customers who walked in at 1pm, 2pm and 2.55pm! Some other examples on bad customer service in Nigerian business were discussed on Nairaland. The Small Business Administration offers free Customer Service tutorials for anyone, regardless of their location who is interested. So does the e-learning centre. (This is actually a real course that caries certification once completed!)

Well, back to my original point about "the project", I made a decision to generate the funding myself and after developing and redeveloping the plan, I ended up with a mini-me business plan. I hunted around for a good webdesigner to bring the site to live... I found this really really great romanian who after haggling the prices with (all the years spent shopping at Balogun market and Tejuosho market weren't wasted, mum), I managed to knock of 20%.

Site completed within a couple of days, I needed flyers. Being a graphic artist as well as a web designer, he came to the rescue yet again! This time, he also referred me to a printer who pinted 1000 flyers for about £30.00 About 50% less than many adverts I see... (Thank God for networking!)

So armed with my flyers, my strategy and my plane ticket, I boarded the plane to Lagos.

4 comments:

Naija Vixen said...

cant wait to read the next post...can we view the site now?

Awoof said...

Patience, my dear. Once we are satisfied with the total outcome of the site, it's going up on this blog first! My readers are getting the V.I.P treatment!

Anonymous said...

1st time on ur blog....not bad

Anonymous said...

1st time on ur blog....not bad