HOW TO TAKE YOUR SKILLS TO THE NEXT LEVEL
“My articles are basically targeted towards young people who have access to so much information especially as a result of information overload from the internet and this in turn makes them restless a s a result of the many options available. My articles would mainly be on providing clarity based primarily on my personal experiences and a mix of other content.”
With
David Apaflo, ACA
David, a chartered accountant, is CEO at Shelze Consulting, a firm specializing in accounting, tax and business advisory services tailored towards supporting SMEs. David serves as business adviser to several startups and early stage companies in West Africa. Follow Shelze Consulting on twitter @shelzegroup. He also shares his thoughts on his personal blog
Recently, the leadership of NYSC decided to introduce a Skill Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development Program (SAED) as part of the one year mandatory NYSC Scheme. It is impressive to see the effort of NYSC in ensuring that the unemployment rate in Nigeria is drastically reduced by equipping everyone who passes through the scheme with one skill or the other.
I was privileged to be a facilitator at a capacity building session for Corps Members in February this year and it was great teaching budding entrepreneurs the usefulness of accounting records.
Anyway, accounting is not the topic for this piece. In this piece we would be looking at how you can take your newly developed skill to the next level be it cake making, bead making etc.
So now you know how to bake, what next?
In business, having the skill to get the job done is not good enough. You need more. You need to be able to convince people to patronize you (marketing) you need to position your skill or product (branding), keep good records of your finance (accounting) and so much more.
How do I make N1 Million from this skill? Is it possible?
Yes you can! Believe it or not! You need to read the story of a graduate who make loads of money selling Akara!
Let us look at practical ways of making N1 Million from your newly developed skill. I would use bead making as a case study here.
N1 Million in a year means:
- About N84,000 Monthly;
- About N19,500 Weekly;
- About N2,800 Daily.
Suddenly N1 million looks small right?
Let us assume one set of beads goes for N3,000, all that is required to make N1 Million a year is to sell 360 beads. In a country of 160 million people, 360 customers a year should not be hard to find. Let us look at how this can be done simply:
- Personal Sales: Being the CEO of your new business venture, you can leverage on family, friends, church members, neighbours etc. to sell your pieces.
- Online Shopping Outlets: Jumia.com, Konga.com, kasuwa.com there are over 500 online shopping websites I know and you can list your products on their web stores.
- Physical Shops: You may not have enough money to rent a shop yet but you can have shop owners help display your craft.
- Dealdey: Giving discounted deals on dealdey.com can certainly boost your sales. Infact, it is possible to sell all 360 beads through deal day in 10 sale batches of 36 pieces each!
- Special Orders: From time to time, people would call on you to help make bespoke beads since they know you are into that line of business. These set of people find you without any effort of yours.
- Events: Find cheerful events where people are likely to splash out cash. A wedding for example is a good place to market your craft. Infact, anywhere happy people are gathered is a good place to sell.
Our sales analysis should look like this:
There you have it. Go and get that million bucks! And who says you have to stop at N1 million?
Thank you so much! I learned a lot from the post! I hope to see more posts for newbie like this.