Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology, held its second edition of MEST Lagos Masterclass series, the first after the renovation of its facilities, on Saturday, October 28, 2017, at its premises on No. 19b, Adeyemi Lawson Road, Ikoyi, Lagos. The aim of the Masterclass, according to Nosa Omusi, Community Manager of the facility, the aim of the Masterclass is to provide attendee Startups with insights and knowledge required to navigate the difficult path of growing their new enterprises in today’s challenging business environment.
The topic of this edition of the MEST Masterclass was “Preparing your Startup to scale up” and was facilitated by a Master Trainer, Gbolahan Fagbure, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Supermart.ng. Prior to his Co-Founding Supermart.ng, he was the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer, COO, of Jumia.com.ng.
Gbolahan kicked of his training by changing adjusting the topic of the training to “Growing your business through phases”. This is because, according to him, he is not comfortable with the word ‘Startup’, but he is more at home with referring to them as ‘new businesses’. His argument was that, a business is a business, whether it is an MNC like Unilever or a person selling phone airtime. “All of them want to run a business to make an income, minimise their costs and make profit at the end of the day”, he argued.
He admonished the attendees to know what their business is all about, what problem the business is going to solve and how to improve on the solutions, with time as well as how money can be made from it. He stated that as an entrepreneur, you take full responsibility for anything that goes right or wrong with your business and go o bed, thinking about solving problems, unlike when, as an employee, when you only concerned about and do what you are told to do. His advice for those starting a new business, to start small by doing more with less resources, stretching limited resources to achieve maximum results.
One important thing that Gbolahan stressed, was the issue of investing in systems and processes, not minding the costs, and have these in place before commencing the business. Once the systems and processes are documented and followed, the business will run smoothly from day one and everything will be accounted for. Gbolahan further stated that they should understand their market, know who their customers are and strive to make the customer understand their businesses.
Gbolahan also explained to the attendees that, it is important for them to understand their numbers, which includes knowing how money is made in the business, how money is lost in the business, so, they can take remedial actions as well as knowing what they can control and dwell on them and those ones they do not have control over.
Those starting new businesses, according to Gbolahan, should be plan at every stage of the business as well as consult widely when planning to have better input. He explained to the attendees that, they need to be disciplined when starting their new businesses, and be ready to do things, even, when they do not feel like doing it. Apart from this, he stated that they need to be disciplined about managing their time as well.
Gbolahan emphasised the need for those starting a new business to ensure that they measure everything they can. To achieve this, he stated that they should track everything they do. In his final thoughts, Gbolahan assured the attendees that the journey of establishing a business that will stand the test of time will be long and rough, hence, they should be ready to take up the challenge by having enough emotional, physical and financial wherewithal to get them through. The training ended with a networking session among the attendees of the Masterclass session.
