I'll Let You Give This A Title As I Don't Know What Title To Give

Happy new week!

Surprised to hear from me again? Think I have abandoned blogging? Ah, gotcha!

A lot has been happening really fast in my life lately. Having to not write any blog post daily has freed up significant time for me to spend on reading hard-to-read books and rebuilding my business, UrBizEdge Limited. 

Have you seen that joke online about the guy who had to look for another job because the company he worked for relocated and didn't inform him? 

image: pinterest.com

Well, as absurd has that sounds, it happened to me/us. The office I use in Ikeja, it was via a special arrangement with a friend. He rented an entire floor with many office rooms than he often use. So one day, while we were discussing, he offered to lease me one of the office rooms. At first, (in 2014) when it was only me running everything I didn't need an office space. But then for tax issues, meetings and other occasional needs it made sense to have a paid office space. So after a week or so of thinking about it, I accepted and he was kind to let me pay a fair rental fee. There were months I didn't step into the office; but then I had it, just was too busy at client side and working from home (my preferred work space) that I seldom go there. Then when I had team members, they would use the place too occasionally. 

Last year, I moved to Gbagada and found it much closer to most places we go than from the Ikeja office. So I turned my living-room to office space. And we used it more than we used the Ikeja office. 

Well, early this month I decided to show our newest staff the office so at least he knows where it is and can use it when he needs to or have a client meeting. Like in the joke I mentioned, my friend had relocated and didn't inform me. When I called him, he said it was in July he got another place and just started the relocation. Well, he could have told me when he was even deciding it not until I found out myself and had to call him. He still wanted us to continue our office sharing arrangement but I don't want another unpleasant surprise. So I decided to get our own dedicated office space and asked him for the refund of the about one year paid for I have left (which I don't think he's wanting to refund).

Emotions aside, it is a positive thing. Though the new office space is very costly but the increased resources we have access to and the better location (in Anthony) makes it a very good one. We are now planning on adding one or two new staff. And you can visit us without me trying to discourage you because I hate the traffic I face in getting to the Ikeja office. This one is just 10 mins drive from my house (sometimes, less). The address is 70b Olorunlogbon street, after Banex hotel and Edichart Supermarket, Anthony Village, Lagos. You can also call me before coming, 0700ANALYTICS (na we get that special number😁)

Also, I have been reading a lot about proper business management. And my MBA courses are really worth it; they've been very eye-opening, helping me see things I never would have figured out myself. So now we are redesigning the company structure. Built an organogram from the company as it would be if we were not funding and resource constrained. 

The idea is to work with the right structure in mind and well explained to every team member. So even though just a couple of us are doing all the 17 roles we should have, gradually as we hire more staff we become more like we should be on the organogram. I got this great learning from Michael Gerber's E-myth Revisited. It is a great book every first time entrepreneur should read.

Also, I am making breakthrough with structuring our consulting business arm. After many hard-lessons from unpaid consulting or undercharging we have now come up with a strict process for onboarding new consulting projects. We would rather be chilling/sleeping than take up a consulting project without agreeing on the payment and scope terms.

Lastly, the enterprise solutions arm is taking off gradually. After launching a trial solution which was successful, grossing between N500,000 & N900,000 monthly at 8% operating profit margin (which isn't bad for the minimal work involved and the nature of the e-product), we are now almost done with the main one. The very one I have always had in mind and have been working on since 2012. Now the developers who built the trial one have been working on this big one since February 2018 and we are almost ready. The final launch link is http://nigeriamarketdata.com/ but you can help test it and give us feedback by accessing the pre-launch one at https://stoka-ui.azurewebsites.net/ 

Just to sneak this in: I should be getting married soon (like in under a year's time). I don't have much control over how private/lowkey or highkey it would be but now you know. So don't feel offended if I suddenly say it has happened and you didn't see any IV. Again, it's outside my control -- deliberately (as I have no experience with non-training event management) and non-deliberately (as I am not the only one involved in the planning).