The Month of May - Business Study and Application

The month of May came and went in a flash. Did anyone notice? I sure did. Despite the speed of it all, May sure was an eventful month. Many things happened everywhere and with everything.

I may sound like a broken record now to anyone who follows my blog and reads what I put out but I just cannot fully count my blessings without counting DD. I wrote about how DD all started and all the struggles I have had to face. DD is a business that started like a dream. Mom quit her teaching job and began selling bean cakes by the roadside. That was how it started.

One beautiful thing about me is that I do not just hop on something. In everything I choose to do, there is always an underlying vision. Which is why I work with passion and why I do not give up even when I quit. That was how DD started as well. It began with my mom but then, I took over after we finally moved to a better environment.

Let me not go on a spiral here and keep it straight. May was so eventful because I learned a lot about myself, people around me and my business. Also my birth month, I think May helped me realize and admit to things that I have been putting away for a while:

1. ‘What people are thinking’ is all in my head
2. Forcing things leads to a burn out
3. Mistakes are inevitable

This is a summary of it all. I have not had much progress on Hive because I am busy directing and channeling my energy to something more long term and stable. My entire wallet has gone into the process of making my business stand. Another thing I learned while bleeding dry was how unexpected things can actually shape your life. I am definitely not who I was last month.

From the beginning of May, nothing seemed to be going my way. DD hit a wall when I was not realizing my capital or the benefits. It seemed like everything kept falling and we kept closing shop repeatedly until I began to hear the call of defeat. I already began to feel like a failure. There is nothing worse than that. However, I have friends who came through for me and supported me financially to get back on my feet. When this happened, I knew I had to revisit my business plan.

I was selling myself short and I had to own up to it. After all said and done, Mom and I carried back 25 tubers of yam at the cost of N70, 000. Each tuber now 2,800. My business partner and I spoke for hours (on call) and days via text on turning things around. First, we changed the menu. Or rather, we upgraded it. Added something new and upped the price.

After a thorough analysis and research on my part, I presented what I knew to him and he chipped in what he knew. A plan was coming together days before we would open again. By the time the week ended, I was ready to go back to shop. However, I was so freaking scared!

I had so many fears and all of it stemmed with the price of things. At last minute, my fear prompted me to do something impulsive. I restocked something we have been missing on the menu for weeks. It was a total ‘fight’ response but it paid off.

The first thing I noticed was the slow response of people to the new price. They kicked against it of course and some would turn their back and leave, others would cancel their orders. It was flat out discouraging. I could feel my irritation growing by the minute. The way I respond to such situations is not something I am proud of. Anyway, I sat for an hour in the shop, no orders or customers and thought, “I’m fluffed!”

Still, I got up, picked up my trusted delivery basket and walked towards the market bustling with people I knew would be hungry. The first thing I did was tell them of the new menu. I, Deraa, who is not so good with people found myself ‘pitching’ my product in a market place. Whatever shyness I had was gone at the thought of losing money. I had to sell and sell I will!

Someone asked what else we had. Immediately, my brain went into ‘fight’ mode. I impulsively replied we had ‘pap’ (corn meal) and ‘akara’ (bean cakes), which we did, but pap has not been available for weeks due to unstable light. All I knew was that I needed to sell something to get these people buying the main product later. It was like an epiphany.

I got one order for pap (LMAO! Which I did not have) and another for boiled yam with egg sauce (the new thing on the menu). That was how it began. I quickly rushed to the market, bought a few wraps of raw pap, and had my mother make them. I took the egg sauce and the pap to the customers and…

BOOM!

…the door opened. All I had to do was sell one.

The orders came in like water when others saw what the meal looked like. The boiled yam cleared within minutes. I felt joy. Only thing left was selling the Golden Yam and that was so easy because the boiled yam just paved way for everything. That day, we sold three tubers of yams before 1pm.

It gets easy from there right? Wrong! It got much harder. So, Pap is back and every morning about 10 wraps of pap sold with akara. I made the capital I spent on pap within thirty minutes. Following that, the boiled yams sell fast then the golden yams last. This rather blinded me for the first week until I took stock and saw that things still did not add up.

Expenses were more than they should be both at home and shop. Cost me a lot to realize that but it happened and made me sit down, rethink, and review. The first thing I looked at was ingredients. The ingredients we used to prepare things like the sauces and bean cakes. I looked into the necessities of some of these items and saw that I had two things working for one. What do I mean? I was buying two things that do the same thing when I can just get one of them. In addition, I put too much emphasis on quality.

Do not get me wrong. I make sure to get quality materials for my food but I let people upsell me. So, I immediately redirected my sights to new distributors who are traders in the local market, and got some of these ingredients cheaper and better.

That was one. Two, I looked at living expenses. I do not have a job, which means I depend on the business for sustenance. This ate into the weekly sales and I had to revisit how we transported to work, the things we ate and where we went. Seeing that going to church actually ate the bigger share of transportation, I told my mom that only one of us could go to church for a while until all we sort out things. Mom for the first time agreed to be away from church and so, we connect to service from home via TV or YouTube. This spoke volumes in the result we got the next week! Then, as a last resort, Mom and I had breakfast and lunch at shop. Sometimes I hardly eat the whole day because I am working and forget.

Our breakfast consist of akara and/or pap, lunch would be yam and dinner would be something available within the house. Then I realized I had to apply a new system with money distribution. I opened other pocket savings and would meticulously calculate (subtraction and division) each dish. Then I would evenly distribute whatever it was to their designated pockets.

Today was D-day for DD. I realized this morning that today (that I would sell the last tubers) would tell me if I have grown in the aspect of money management or not. After sales, I made calculations and sent money to bank. I made back yam capital! I could not believe it. I honestly felt proud of myself. The first time in months that I saw the capital of the money, I spent on Yam. Wow.

Of course, that is one milestone and there are so many others to cross. For now, I bask in this progress that I am growing when it comes to the knowledge of something I really like. That is money. I like money and love the process of making it. Looking back on the month of May, what did not kill me actually made me stronger. I started May with a challenge to do better. I set goals daily, meditated, lived in the moment and tried new things. I am genuinely proud of myself. I look forward to June!

This is my entry to day 31 of the #mayinleo initiative. Join now by clicking this link to read the announcement. All Images are mine.