Last week I had a meeting with my first official partner for DiscoverCotonou.com. He has known me for about 6 years now, and has seen me grow my brand (from Spontaneousdevelopment.com to TayoSolagbade.com) to what it is now – from almost nothing when we first met as total strangers.
Little wonder that when I proposed we team up to offer solutions from DiscoverCotonou.com to my target audience on the Lagos/Nigeria end, he readily agreed.
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Tayo Solagbade’s
Performance Improvement IDEAS
(PI Squared) Newsletter
Monday 26th February 2018
NB: This PI Squared newsletter will be published weekly, on Mondays, in place of the Speaking/Web Marketing IDEAS newsletter, starting from today – 15th February 2016. I’m reinventing my Monday newsletter content and theme, to accommodate my vision of serving the growing audience of serious minded individuals and organizations reaching out to me, with information, education. news and research findings designed to help them do what they do better.
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PII107: You Need to Forget NaySayers, Ignore Doubts to Achieve Your Dreams: DiscoverCotonou.com Secures Space for Office/Travel Shop in Nigeria’s Lagos
Last week I had a meeting with my first official partner for DiscoverCotonou.com. He has known me for about 6 years now, and has seen me grow my brand (from Spontaneousdevelopment.com to TayoSolagbade.com) to what it is now – from almost nothing when we first met as total strangers.
Little wonder that when I proposed we team up to offer solutions from DiscoverCotonou.com to my target audience on the Lagos/Nigeria end, he readily agreed.
In the coming weeks, we will be setting up a basis presence in the office space he has offered for us to use in a facility he manages.
Interestingly, he has told me of plans he and members of a group be belongs to had been working on towards touring Benin Republic – especially to visit Cotonou, and Songhai in Porto Novo.
When I confirmed that the “Tour” service from DiscoverCotonou.com could meet their needs, there and then he said they’d drop the tour operator they had been in talks with, and come on board my platform.
He noted that apart from the fact that he knows and trusts me, I also speak French and have lived extensively among the locals, forging strong connections that I’m now tapping to setup DiscoverCotonou.com.
All of that combined to make the idea of his group choosing my service over that of the other company (whose owners do not even speak French) a no-brainer.
But this partner who believes in my new idea belongs to a minority – as most people I’ve told my plans generally do not show any interest.
I’ve been down this road before i.e. one in which I’m chasing a new dream or implementing a new idea that others do not really see potential for success in.
When I started trying to sell my Excel-VB programming skills in Nigeria, it was the same – no one really took me serious.
They just nodded and WAITED to see.
I’ve told the stories about how I got mocked, ridiculed and laughed at countless times in different places – even by those close to me,
No one believed I could find anyone to pay me any money (talk less up to N200k that I’ve since gotten paid) to build what I called Excel-Visual Basic driven software for their use.
It took my application of extreme creativity in cozjunction with my trademark infectious enthusiasm and relentless persistence, to prove that I was right.
Today, I have built a reputation as a provider of a range of customizable commercial quality Excel-VB software designed to solve real life problems (like my Ration Formulator, Poultry Farm Manager, General Accounts Manager, Membership Records Manager, Pay slip Generator, Automated Cash Book/Bank Reconciliation App – and others).
Not only have I successfully sold my applications to clients within and outside Africa, I am also working my plan to build an army of Excel-VB Solution Developers primarily in my part of the world, to learn how to do what I do (and more) using Excel-VB code.
In this regard, for instance, as recently as 3 weeks ago, I welcomed a new member into my Excel Heaven Visual Basic Automation club – a Financial Consultant based in Nairobi, Kenya, who discovered me through the demonstration video for my Automatic Cash Book, in my YouTube channel.
Last week, I sent him the first is a series of email based tutorials (see email screenshot below) designed to guide him towards learning the coding and spreadsheet design techniques he needs to be able to build his own Pay slip Generator software.
So, I’ve come a long way, from way back in 2002, when I visited organizations like Lagos Business School to try showing them why Excel-VB programming should be offered as a full course to their clients. They ignored me – MANY times over, until I got tired of visiting. They were not the only ones. Dunlop did the same as did Cadbury.
After a while, I got the message – and I stopped approaching the big names. Instead, I took time to carefully profile small and medium sized businesses as well as solo operator (independent consultants) that could benefit from the Excel-VB solutions I offered.
Gradually, I narrowed down to several niches and began to get quality engagement, until the ales began to happen.
Today, I have built my custom software for various kinds of businesses – such as hotels, hospitals, health and fitness clubs, churches, medical clinics but my greatest success so far is selling my custom Excel software solutions has been recorded in the farm business industry. This market has been the most responsive to the solutions I offer, both locally and internationally.
What I have learned over the years with regard to attracting buyers now equips me to create client attraction systems for DiscoverCotonou.com – my new product/service travel website.
Like I always say, I LOVE being an underdog. When people scoff at an idea I mute, it motivates me!
Why? Because experience has taught me that when that happens, it’s a sign that
This new journey to sell DiscoverCotonou.com solutions is one that I intend to make a success of, in a manner that complements what I have already achieved via TayoSolagbade.com.
By way of interest, I actually have an Excel-VB software application, built in 2013, during my first year in Cotonou, designed for use as a language learning tool. So you see there is a link between even the stuff I’ve been doing before and the new stuff I am now trying to start via DiscoverCotonou.com.
Click below to learn how to get the application FREE
Buy ANY of myproducts/services from N12.5k upwards, and get A FREE copy of Part 1 of my “Quick & Dirty Guide to English Language for French Speakers” (N5k) – click here to learn more.
Excel-VB Driven Ration Formulator
1. Click here to learn more about this app – watch demo videos etc
2.Click here to watch a 4 part video in which I demonstrate how to use this app to formulate rations using real life data sent to me by an Algerian PhD student.
Click here to contact me about purchasing this product.
EXCEL-VB DRIVEN POULTRY LAYER FARM MANAGER SOFTWARE
Click here to download a detailed PDF user guide and watch 15 screen shot user guide tutorials of the Monthly Poultry Farm Manager that I now offer Farm CEOs.
Click here to contact me about purchasing this product.
SDN Blog™
New posts from last week*
Monday:
Powerful Strategy for Making Money from FREE Talks You Give [NO, It’s Not Back Room Sales]
[Thursday]:
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[Friday]:
N/A
[Saturday]:
N/A
[Sunday]:
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Tayo K. Solagbade*
Self-Development/Performance Improvement Specialist and Multipreneur
*Best Practice Farm Business Support Specialist & Founder of the MS Excel Heaven Visual Basic Automation Club and Competition
Mobile: +234-803-302-1263 (in Nigeria) or +229-66-122-136 (in Benin Republic)
Tayo K. Solagbade is a Location Independent Performance Improvement Specialist and Multipreneur (i.e. a highly versatile/multi-skilled entrepreneur), with a bias for delivering Best Practice solutions to Farm Businesses and others.
Since 2002, he has earned multiple streams of income providing individuals and organizations with personal development training and coaching, custom MS Excel-VB solutions, web marketing systems/ web hosting, freelance writing services, and best practice extension support services (for farm business owners).
Tayo is the author of the Self-Development (SD) Bible™ and the popular Livestock Feed Formulation Handbook. He is also the developer of its accompanying Excel-VB driven Ration Formulator™ and the Poultry Farm Manager™ software.
He has delivered talks/papers to audiences in various groups and organizations, including the Centre for Management Development, University of Lagos, Christ Baptist Church, Volunteer Corps, Tantalisers Fast Foods and others.
In May 2012 he was the Guest Speaker at the Centre for Entrepreneurship Development’s Annual Semester Entrepreneurial Lecture at Yaba College of Technology in Lagos.
On 1st April 2013, Tayo (who reads, write and speaks the French language) relocated to Cotonou, Benin Republic to begin slowly traveling across the West African region.
His key purpose is to deliver talks, seminars and workshops on his key areas of focus and interest to interested audiences (Email tayo at tksola dot com for details).
In a previous life, before leaving to become self-employed, Tayo served for seven years (October 1994 to December 2001) as a high performing manager in Guinness Nigeria. He rose from Shift Brewer to Training & Technical Development Manager, and later acted in senior roles as Production Manager and Technical Manager.
In addition to constantly challenging the status quo and influencing positive work changes, he built a reputation for using self-taught spreadsheet programming skills (starting with Lotus 1-2-3, and later moving to Excel Visual Basic) – in his spare time – to develop Automated Spreadsheet Applications to computerize manual report generation processes in the departments he worked. Over four(4) of his applications were adopted for brewery level reporting.
Tayo holds a B.Sc degree in Agricultural Extension Services from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, having graduated top of his class – with Second Class Upper Division honors – in 1992. He is an Associate Member of the UK Institute & Guild of Brewing, a 1997 National Finalist of the Nigerian Institute of Management’s(NIM) Young Managers’ competition, a Certified Psychometric Test Administrator for Psytech UK, innovator of Spontaneous Coaching for Self-Development™ (SCfS-D™), and Founder of the Self-Development Academy (SDAc).
When he’s not amazing clients with his superhuman skills (wink), Tayo works as the creative force behind his Daily Self-Development Nuggets blog – on which he also publishes The Farm CEO Weekly Newspaper (sent via email to paid subscribers) and his Weekly Performance Improvement IDEAS newsletter.
You can connect with him on Twitter @tksola.com and Facebook.
Visit Tayo Solagbade Dot Com, to download over over 10 performance improvement resources to boost your personal and work related productivity.
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[IMPORTANT NOTE:====
On 4th May 2014, Tayo’s 9 year old domain (Spontaneousdevelopment dot com), which hosted his website, was taken over by Aplus.net.
Within a few days however, Tayo used his advanced self-taught web development skills to build a SUPERIOR “reincarnation” of it the website http://www.tayosolagbade.com.
But updates are still ongoing to URLs bearing the old domain name in most of the over 1,000 web pages, and blog posts he’s published.
If you experience any difficulties finding a page or document, email Tayo at tksola dot com.
Click “Tayo, What Happened to SpontaneousDevelopmentDotCom ?” to read a detailed narrative about how the above event occurred :-))
Here’s an article Tayo wrote, to inspire others to defy adversity, and bounce back to even greater reckoning at what they do EVERY time:
Succeed by Emerging from Adversity Like a Phoenix
(TayoSolagbade.com launches extra Hosting plan with FREE Web Marketing!)
And he wrote the one below, to explain why losing a domain name, no matter how old, NO LONGER determines your online success or otherwise:
A Proven Strategy to Find Profitable Buyers Regardless of Your Domain Name
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