I am a postgraduate student of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, studying virology without a job. My parents have been very wonderful in supporting me with my education but that could not sustain my upkeep and tuition fees. I found it difficult to eat and live a happy life until I came to the realization that I could not continue to live that way.
I was penniless most times and could barely eat on some days, periods mixed with frustration, guilt and acrimony. Due to this sad state of my life, I confided in a friend that we both had similar problems, he had it worse than me and I felt we should think of a way out of our predicaments. Having lived with him for two years, I realized that he had a knack for laundering cloths and giving them good aesthetic appearance where the cloths look starched, neatly pressed and clean.
I thought this would make a good business if such laundry service can be rendered to people in our community, after a lengthy discussion about how to monetize his skills, he accepted and thanked me for the business foresight. The next big issue was capital to set up the facility for laundry business. We were in an institution with guaranteed 12hrs of uninterrupted power supply, so I decided to talk to some of our friendly lecturers if we could make use of the power supply in the University for pressing cloths and they approved. We needed a washing machine, but there was no capital to buy one, so it was decided that we would contract out the cloths to people who can hand wash the cloths and pay them for their labor as agreed upon.
The last on the list was getting pressing irons, we scraped every penny we had and got two pressing irons at the cost of #11,000 naira ( 40 USD) , Nigerian currency. Finally we worked on our branding and packaging using disposable nylons for packing the cloths and a sticker representing our mini company.
Starting this business successfully, taught me the power of resilience in overcoming obstacles. Our business has been growing steadily but this is not to say it wouldn't have grown faster if there was enough capital to buy washing machines, mobile car for home delivery of cloths and a rented space.
Thank you for reading, and hope you are inspired.
Congratulations @olamidearege! You have completed the following achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
Click on the badge to view your Board of Honor.
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOP