All About School Life – Episode 7

Good day everyone and welcome to another episode of All About School Life. In this episode, I will be talking about how I started business in school and how it has been so far.

In school, there was a time when everyone wanted to do business, though, I had already started before then. The pressure was very high. Any small thing, you will see an advert for one new business on someone’s WhatsApp status.

Well, for me, I started business in year two. There was this urge to make money and to start early. The idea was “if I can do business while in school, by the time I am graduating, the business should be standing properly and producing reasonable returns.”

So I decided to go into selling phone accessories and charging phones because ‘NEPA’ hardly brings light in my school area. Sometimes, we will only see light once or twice in a semester. So charging phones was the main idea, while selling phone accessories was an addition.

I told my dad about the business and he wasn’t happy about it. He told me to read my book 😂. But my mummy helped me persuade him 😁. So he gave me the money I needed for the business and I kicked off.

The business was doing well, though there were some ups and downs I was still pushing.

It stressed me out but didn’t distract my academics, as my dad feared because I had someone that was staying at the shop for me. The stress was from the challenges the business was facing.

First of all, the generator that I bought was a used one. It was meant to be new but I miscalculated some things and the money was not enough for a new one. So I bought a second hand and paid for the remaining with my peace. I kept on repairing this generator with the money the shop was making and even had to put in my feeding money. It was not funny at all. To make it worse, my dad was not willing to send any extra cash lol. So I was on my own.

Secondly, I had to pay the person in the shop. So the money I was meant to use to pay my employee, I was using it to repair my generator, then removing money out of my pocket to pay my employee and also support the repairing of my generator 🙂.

I had to fold. I closed the business before the business will ‘close me’. I was in year three when I decided to stop.

Then in year four, I decided to go into something simpler, Point Of Sale (POS). So my mum helped me with funding this time and I started the business. I am still doing it now and it’s yielding positively.

I learned much from my first business, but I lost serious money. I learned money management, patience, endurance, and how business works. I believe If I was to start a major business in the future, my chances of failing will be very slim.

That’s the story of my business journey in school and surely, greater days are yet to come. Business is not sweet at the beginning, so just put that one at the back of your head. Thank you for reading, stay tuned for the next episode of All About School Life.