Three years ago, we interviewed four University graduates for a certain job at Hostalite.
I honestly wasn’t impressed because three of them failed the practical/ hands on tests.
My mind went racing and quickly got an idea to start a training center that would equip such graduates and many more with practical I.T and business skills.
I quickly ordered for computers, turned the Hostalite Board room into that training centre. This was all done in a space of one week, I honestly can’t tell where this excitement came from, that led me to spend all this money without planning properly.
We called it Hostalite Cyber Academy| HCA which I am sure some of us have heard about it.
We went ahead and spent money of adverts, got a few students who came to study some of the courses we were offering.
The students:
Remember we had converted the Hostalite Board room into a lecture room where students would have the sessions.
I must say that this was a very big mistake because we eventually didn’t have a place to hold meetings at Hostalite , this didn’t look good in the eyes of our corporate clients.
Here is the dilema, we now had students, Hostalite staff, and sometimes visiting clients, all at Hostalite. ( The student who has paid their money for a course wouldn’t mind whether a Hostalite client is happy with the conduct or not. Some would play loud music in the board room (read Academy) as Hostalite staff were busy working or even attending to clients.
This went on and on for sometime but I realised that I was instead killing the Hostalite Brand.
I got alot of complaints from Hostalite Staff about this inconvenience but kept thinking they were just used to too much freedom only to realise later that they were actually reporting the voices from clients.
… Long story short.
I made an executive decision to close the academy and plan better, otherwise I would lose both.
#Lesson Learnt
- Don’t be too excited to start because you have this burning business idea. Take a deep breath, You could lose alot more.
- Just because there is money, don’t just spend. The computers I bought hurriedly have ever since been kept in their boxes for three years offcourse depreciating.
- There is a reason a board room is called a board room. Don’t look at it as wasted space. Like a home needs a master bedroom, an office needs a boardroom.
- Plan, as the saying goes” when you fail to plan, you plan to fail. If I had taken time to plan , may be I would have started 6 months or a year later but would have moved systematically and who knows, the Academy would have grown up to a stage of issuing diplomas.
- Listen to your staff, most times they report what they have heard from clients or even competition.
- Plan.
- Plan.
- Plan.
Have a lovely weekend.
#DontrepeatmyMistakes