Oluwakemi Asefeso

Creating a business name that well represents your business is good but registering it with the appropriate authority is very important. For example in Nigeria, you register your business name with Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).

When I started my business, the name I used was not approved by CAC during search, I had to change it to another name which cost some setbacks in the area of branding ie I have to do a total rebranding of all of my products.

Benefits of a registered business name

👉It helps to deal with trust issues from the side of the customer/client.

👉It connects your business with opportunities out there.

👉You can open a corporate bank account with your registered business name.

👉It brings professionalism to your business.

👉it brings about partnerships with other brands(big or small).

👉It gives your business legal protection.

👉It enhances your brand image credibility and perception of the business.

👉It gives your business access to loans from financial institutions.

👉It gives your business a unique identity.

👉 It protects you from personal liability.

👉It is important for continuity sake.

👌Most potential customers/client would rather deal with a company than deal with an individual because of trust and risks issues. I know of some who got a large supply contract but was asked to present a registered business name to get the contract but lost it because the business name was not registered at the time. Opportunity can knock at your door at any time, don’t let not having a registered business name rob you of it. A word is enough for the wise.

NB: Registration of business name is not as expensive as people think here in Nigeria. You can do it yourself online or get a professional to help you out.

I know some people will say I don’t have money to do the needful, you want to know how I was able to raise the money on my own without the help of others. Get a copy of my book on “how to start and grow a work from home business”.

Knowledge is power!

If you got value, kindly let me know in the comment section.

Thanks.

(C) Oluwakemi Asefeso

When starting a business It is not advisable to start with a loan. The issue here is most people don’t want to start small. If you don’t have the money required to start the business you have always dreamt of, the solution is “starting a service based business”, which will help you to raise the capital you need.

What is a service based business?

It is a kind of business that requires your knowledge, skill or expertise which requires little or no capital. In the service based business, customers purchase the skills of a service provider or owner, such as a plumber or lawyer, This type of business has a strong emphasis on the client relationship and makes the customer’s user experience very important.

Some Service based business you can do

👉Residential Cleaning: All you need to do is approach people who don’t have the time to clean their houses and compound because of work. You can start from your neighbour hood to advertise to people. If you know your onions very well, you don’t have to do the cleaning yourself you can employ someone/people to do it for a token.

👉Website Designer: There is no business that does not need this service. Those who have theirs can tell how much this service cost. With specialized software, creating websites comes easy, so long as you have some basic technical and graphic savvy. You do this by helping businesses establish a site; existing clients will need help keeping their websites up-to-date, as well.

👉Home Decorating: Home in on the decorating business with your flair for design. Work with local furniture and accessory stores, paint shops, and carpet and drapery outlets to coordinate clients’ interiors. And remember: The key to getting in the door of this business is decorating your own home, first.

👉Sales Training: Don’t sell yourself short: with some self-promotion and marketing know-how, you could have what it takes to build your own business as a sales trainer. By sharing your sales savvy with other busy business owners, you not only help boost clients’ bottom line, but yours, too.

👉 Copywriting and Proofreading: If you are a creative writer with a knack for finding typos and mistakes, you can help people with their write-ups. Writers who help ensure clients’ advertising copy is both catchy and fault-free may not win a Pulitzer, but they will have some profits to write home about.

👉Language Translator: Falling foreign-trade barriers and improved communication technology translate into success for language translators and interpreters. An ear for multiple languages puts you at the forefront of this global movement.

👉Sales-Lead Generating: Streamline sales people’s efforts by identifying prospects and generating sales leads. Some footwork, market research(online and offline), and a phone set you on the path to compiling a list of potential customers for your clients. You can help businesses manage their social media to generate sales for them.

👉Digital Marketing: You could also go with a more generalized set of offerings, including content marketing, social media or online ads.

👉Life Coach: If you prefer working with people on an individual basis and offering a wide variety of tips and expertise, you could offer your services as a life coach.

👉Graphic Design: For those who are visually inclined, you can offer services for designing logos, branding and paper products for businesses or individuals.

👉Dropshipping: Dropshipping is a business model which you can use to run your store without ever holding any inventory. Once you’ve made a sale your supplier will ship your products from their warehouse, straight to your customer’s doorstep. It simply selling someone or people’s goods by adding your own profit.

👉Business Consulting: If you have business experience, you could work with other entrepreneurs to provide guidance and expertise as a consultant.

👉Mobile App Developers: An emerging business opportunity, those with the skills and training can work with businesses or individuals to help them create their own mobile applications.

👉Event Planning: If you have strong organizational and planning skills, work with clients to create unique weddings or special events.

👉Fittness Training: If you’re a health and fitness enthusiast, you might start a business as a personal trainer where you work with clients individual

👉Errand Service: To offer more a more wide ranging list of services, you can start an errand business where you shop for groceries, finish laundry or complete other various tasks.
You start from your neighbour hood by helping people shop for foods, groceries etc and you charge for your service.

👉Teach people how create ebooks, audio books, videos for online courses.

👌You need to get the required skill and a mentor to hold you by the hand to learn the art of the business for some of these service based businesses.

💁🏼‍♀️Do you need more information on how to go about any of these service based business, let me know in the comment section.

😁The interesting thing here is that most of these business can be done from the comfort of your home.

👏🏽Please add a service based business you know in the comment section and also help share the post.

Thanks.

(C) Oluwakemi Asefeso

1. Snubbing social networks

2. Misusing happy customers

3. Ignoring beginners

4. Failing to network

5. Blaming customers

6. Never slashing price

7. Offering what you cannot deliver

8. Forgetting to edit.

9. Faking Poularity

10. Ignoring Customers’s complains

11. Overlooking exceptional customer service

12. Refusing referrals

13. Not tapping into affiliates

14. Avoid self promotion

15.Forgetting about youtube

Strong interpersonal skills are prerequisite for many organisation and businesses. It is also a prerequisite for many positions in organizations.

Interpersonal skills are the qualities and behaviours a person uses to interact or relate with others properly.

In business, the term refers to an employee’s ability to work well with others while performing their job.

Interpersonal Skills

1. Communication

2. Active Listening

3. Empathy

4. Problem Solving

5. Positive Mental Attitude

6. Leadership

7. Self Confidence

8. Negotiation

9. Time Management

10. Work Ethics

11. Body Language

12. Customer Relationship

13. Team work

14. Assertiveness

15. Showing Appreciation

16. Intelligence

17. Motivation

18. Receptiveness to feedback

19. Flexibility

20. Pressure Tolerant

Please kindly leave a comment in the comment section for your contributions, questions and feedbacks.

Thanks.

Oluwakemi Asefeso

Your presentation skills is as important as the information you are presenting.

Presentation skills are the skills you need in delivering effective and engaging presentation to a variety of audience. Effective and clearly presenting information is an essential skill to get your message or opinion accross.

How to improve your presentation skills

1. Practice.

2. Know the subject.

3. Know your audience.

4. Keep your presentation short and pinteresting.

5. Tell stories.

6. Video yourself.

7. Arrive early.

8. Adjust to your surroundings.

9. Meet and greet.

10. Smile.

11. Don’t try to cover too much materials.

12. Drink water.

13. Keep an eye contact with all the people on the room while giving the presentation.

14. Use pictures for your presentation.

15. Use positive visualization.

16. Be confident.

17. Have a back plan.

18. Work on your pauses.

19. Take deep breaths.

20. Be entertaining, actively engage the audience by asking them what they think and allow them ask questions.

Please kindly leave your comment in the comment box for your contributions, questions and feedbacks.

Thanks.

Oluwakemi Asefeso

Personal branding is how you promote yourself. It is the unique combination of skills, experience and personality that you want the world to see in you. It is telling of your story, and how it reflects your conduct, behaviour, spoken and unspoken words, and attitudes. It also means to develop a unique professional identity and message that sets you apart from others either in your company or in your industry.

Ways to build personal branding

1. Be self aware

It is important to define yourself and your business.You need to know your strengths and weakenesses and also identify customers who wants what you are offering and can celebrate your brand. Answer this question what is your unique personality?, as this will help you create your brand.

2. Know Your Target Audience

You need to know who your customers are, or where to find them because If you’re clueless as to who would likely buy your products/services, you’ll have a hard time narrowing down the advertising platforms to choose for promotional campaigns, and you’ll end up losing money.

3. Understand How Others Perceive You and be sincere.

Getting feedbacks on what others say about your person is a key to develop personal branding. Know this whats; what are your strengths, your weaknesses and what’s the one word that describes you best? Use this information to create an executive summary for your personal and business profile. Be sincere in all you do, and it will resonate with your core audience because people don’t initially buy into a brand, they buy into a person.When your potential clients/customers see that you are sincere, they will become your most avid brand ambassadors which brings about a level of support that comes from loyalty, something money can not buy.

4. Follow Your Passion

You need to know and be clear on what it is you are passionate about and what you want to create. Also be clear and concise on who your ideal client/customers is and what their needs are and how best will your company serve them. Ask yourself questions to help you identify what makes your company unique and who you are serving as this will help you get the right answers and results.

5. Define Your Brand Image

You need to define who you are and what is important to you and visually find photos, images, colors, and/or graphics to build your website, business cards and social media platform. Having an online and offline image that reflects the core of your value will make people to associate with your brand. Also, be consistent with the image of your company across all platforms.

6. Know your medium and strategy for branding

You need to know the mediums that best promotes or works for your brand. Decide on the mediums or channels that works for your brand and be consistent with it because not every trends might be suitable for your brand, each medium has it’s own challenges.

7. You will get there

You need to know that it can take a while to get your brand out into the marketplace, just exercise a little patience. Even when results are not coming the way you like, don’t be discouraged, keep doing what you know how to do best, evaluate yourself and company from time to time and make any necessary adjustment required to ensure you are on track.

Please kindly leave a comment in the comment box for your contributions, questions and feedbacks.

Thanks.

Oluwakemi Asefeso

One of a parent’s goal is to balance teaching the necessary social skills whereby nurturing and increasing a child’s creativity.

Kids are natural innovators with powerful imaginations and creativity which helps to develop confidence, social skills and learn better in what they do.

Ways to increase creativity in kids

1. Expose your children: You don’t need costly and complicated trips to expose your children, you can take them to the library, museum, outdoor events as this helps them to use all their five senses which enhances and brings out the creativity in them.

2. Celebrate their Ideas and give encouraging feedbacks: Encourage your kids to share their ideas and building on those ideas in different aspects of life. Always find something positive to say to your kids when they put their creativity at work because they have put in their time and effort to achieve that and it deserves a welldone or an appraisal from you.

3. Be an example of creativity: Set the example of exploring your creativity and your kids will follow. Let your kids see you try something new and experiment it until you can figure out what works because kids learn more from what they see you do. Let them see you make mistakes and learn from them.

4. Give them free time and space: Creativity needs room to breathe. You need to create a space or a play area and time for them to freely express and develop their skills. Also, allow them to think and make choices for themselves with your guidiance.

5. Constantly ask question about their creative projects: You need to show interest by asking questions about their creation so that you could know the idea behind what they do and understand how they think.

6. Let them make things with objects around them and invest in toys: Your kids can make awesome things using materials around them like newspaper, empty paper towel rolls, empty boxes, scrap papers etc. Also invest in toys like blocks, building sets, animal toys etc. which can be used in multiple ways for multiple purposes as this will encourage imaginative play and creativity.

7. Allow them make mistakes: Remember mistakes are good, if they make mistakes and feel dissappointed encourage them by asking “how can we do this again” which will help yield a better result.
Please kindly leave a comment in the comment box for your contributions, questions and feedbacks.

Thanks.

Oluwakemi Asefeso

Procrastination is a universal thing most people do but that does not make it a good idea. It goes beyond work because it affects other area of our lives. When we Procrastinate, we end up missing important tasks which reduces our personal effectiveness in life.

Ways to stop procrastination

1. Know yourself.

2. Break your work down into little steps or phases.

3. Change your workspace or environment.

4. Create an overall timeline with specific deadlines for each small task.

5. Get rid of distractions.

6. Identify people, friends or colleagues who inspire you to take actions and hang out with them often.

7. Get a companion that has his/her own set goals and both of you will hold each other accountable to your goals and plans.

8. Find and connect with those who have already achieved your goals.

9. Reflect on your goals and change it if it is necessary.

10. Rule out the issue of perfect timing to start or do something because there is no perfect timing, just start!

11. Always take action on your goals or plans.

12. Measure your goals and compensate self.
Please kindly leave a comment in the comment box for your contributions, questions and feedbacks.

Thanks.

Oluwakemi Asefeso

Personal effectiveness is a journey to understand yourself, your personal objectives, your working style and your emotions. It also means caring about the difference you can make as an individual.

Importance

• It helps you to know your strengths and weaknesses.

• It helps you understand how to manage your work load effectively and meet deadlines.

• It is a competency skill you need to rely on your role.

Powerful ways to improve personal effectiveness

1. Know your strengths and your weaknesses.

2. Use your strength as an advantage to deal with problems in your life.

3. Continue to improve yourself.

4.Take charge of situations by making your choice with self – determination.

5. Practice commitment in what you do.

6. Do constant evaluation of yourself.

7. Practice effective communication.

8. Complete one task at a time so that you don’t end up working yourself out.

9. Take a break when needed.

10. Decide your priorities in life act accordingly.

11. Make responsible choices for growth and also be accountable for your choices in life.

12. Take good care of your health.

Limitations to personal effectiveness

•Phone calls and messages

•Internet

•Visitors

•Meeting not planned

•Unnecessary talk/gossip

•Sleep

•Not maximising your peak performance.

Please kindly leave a comment in the comment box for your contributions, questions and feedbacks.

Thanks.

Oluwakemi Asefeso

When you write your curriculum vitae(CV), write it in a way you want to be presented ie you speak about yourself and tell the world what you want to see.

A CV is an outline of your experiences and a summary of your academic and work history. Your CV is your pitch. Your pitch is your selling point or your presentation of self. The job seeker is the product, a CV is the commercial and the employer is the consumer.

A CV has less than 8 seconds to grab the attention of the employer and persuade him/her to interview the job seeker and should not be more than 2 or 3 page.

Guidelines to writing a winning CV

● Identification: This includes your name, address, phone numbers and email address.

NB: Don’t include unnecessary things, every job comes with it’s own perculiarity. When writing your name write your own name before your surname. Also use email addresses that are simple to pronounce or know.

● Job objective: This could be optional and should only be included for new or recent graduates and those changing career, otherwise use your cover letter to show your career interests and job objective. Generalize a 4 – 5 line profile.

● Professional Profile: This section includes you writing about self in terms of skills and abilities in a professional way.

● Educational Background: This section includes school(s) attended (including years of attendance), majors/minors degrees and awards received. For new and recent graduates, this entry should be the next. For others with full – time work experience, this section may follow experience section.

● Key Accomplishments: This section is very important. In this section, highlights your key accomplishments and achievements. Think of this section as an executive summary of your CV, identify key accomplishments that will grab the attention of an employer.

● Proffessional Experience: This section can be labelled as “experience”, “work history” but preferably use “experience” especially for new and recent graduates because experience is broader than work history, allowing you to include your major school prospects that demonstrate your skills and abilities. This section include company names, your job title, dates of employment and major accomplishments. List the experiences in reserve chronologically order and in bullet format(rather than paragraph format), starting with your most current experience and avoid discussing job duties or responsibilities. If you don’t have a lot of career related job experience, consider using transferable skills.

● Affiliation/Interest: This section should include only proffessional memberships and non – conversial activities/interests. It should also include a statement saying references are available on request. Include this section only if you have room on your CV for it. Items from this section are often used as an ice – breaker by interviewers looking to start an interview on an informal basis.

NB: The kind of referee you use will tell the employer the kind of person you are. For referee, write available on request.

TIPS

• Organize your experiences in a clear structure.

• Use action rich verbs to describe accomplishments.

• Make your CV clean and easy to read.

• Check for typos.

• Don’t lie, don’t fake it and don’t exaggerate.

• Don’t copy and paste.

• Don’t photocopy your CV.

Please kindly leave a comment in the comment box for your contributions, questions and feedbacks.

Thanks.

Oluwakemi Asefeso