AEP: Entrepreneurship and Girl Power
Hi there!
Thought this would be another book-ish post didn’t you? Well, I thought the same thing but I decided to write this article about six remarkable weeks for me in the month of May, 2020.
On a random day in April (a day I can’t even recall right now, see the need for this article?), I received a text message that I had been accepted into the Aspiring Entrepreneurs Program organised by PAWEN.
Honestly, I was a bit confused at first because there was this period where I was on a shall I say, an application spree? I was sending out and filling a loooot of applications in February and March. Shooting my shot you know? And what’s funny is, the two programs I really hoped I would get into, well…They didn’t accept my applications. In fact, I was patiently waiting for a response from one that should’ve arrived towards the end of March, like some kind of birthday present. Well, I came across a post on LinkedIn by one of the mentors about how glad she was to be mentoring the girls she’d been assigned. Was I jealous? Yes. Pissed? A little. Sad? Don’t go there.
Last year though, I told myself that rejections were better than chickening out and never trying. At least, I gave it a shot. That mattered.
Well, this particular shot was a perfect lay up. A program I’m super excited I got to be a part of.
What’s PAWEN?
Pan African Women Empowerment Network (PAWEN) is a social enterprise with a focus on leadership and economic empowerment of women.
This isn’t exactly a promotion piece so if you want to know more about them, their next cohort and other nice stuff, click here.
What’s AEP?
Aspiring Entrepreneurs Program (PS: I just realized that you get Aspirin before Aspiring, okay back to being serious) is PAWEN’s inaugural program. A six-weeks-to-launch program where people like me (total newbs) and those who already have some prior business experience receive practical knowledge and guidance on how to move from idea to startup. This involves using a framework that encourages long-term sustainability (isn’t that something we all want?) and profitability (of course, moneeeey) of the business enterprise.
Okay so…
Within these six weeks I attended a couple of webinars (Masterclasses and MentorMe sessions where experts in different fields taught and gave advice on a variety of important topics such as how to pitch your business, taxes, marketing, and other things), coach check-ins (we got to pick our coaches), assignments, peer review sessions (we were assigned peer groups which typically consisted about 5 people). There were assignments we had to do on our own, some to do with peer group members, a nice way to learn teamwork I must say.
Sessions I enjoyed the most…
I really enjoyed the coach check-ins as my coach is a very vibrant person, I have no idea how the other coaches arebut as soon as I saw her photo, read the brief description about her and did some snooping online (social media isn’t solely for stalking exes you know), I knew without a doubt that I wanted her to be my coach.
As expected, she’s awesome and I’m really glad I get to maintain the relationship with her even after the program is over.
One of the things I learned from her coaching sessions, I realized I typically have 17 waking hours. The rest for sleep of course and how I utilize those waking hours is really important. I knew I had a decent amount of time during my day but thinking about it made me want to apportion hours of my day doing productive things.
Wetin u gain?…
Well, starting from the acceptance message. It gave me this sense of …I don’t have the words to put it. Validation? Like, yes, someone actually appreciates my business idea and sees potential in it.
That helped boost my morale to be honest and gave me some confidence about my business idea.
In one of the courses about business model and strategy, a masterclass taken by the Founder of PAWEN, Mrs. Oluwaseyi Kehinde-Peters, she talked about the six thinking hats, which is a tool for business model design which allows you to look at your business idea from a variety of perspectives. This, with the help of my peer group members helped me think about things I hadn’t even considered before.
My coach also gave me advice and some tips on how to go about my business as well.
Everything is still a work in progress but I’ll be okay.
Oh, and this program also gave me the boldness to apply for an internship for founders. I don’t know if I’m going to get in or not, either way, i’ll be okay. I sure wasn’t expecting to be interviewed by someone from Silicon Valley that’s for sure. Was I super excited? Heck yeah! I sure hope they didn’t see me sweat because I felt this weird mix of shyness and yas girl (I need to find more words).
Let me not forget the amazing women I got to meet in course of the program as well. I also learned a lot of more from the other masterclasses and mentorme sessions as well but that may be a blog post for another time? Or, let’s see how I apply the stuff I learned in the last six weeks.
In summary…
I’m actually really satisfied that I made good use of those weeks in May when it seemed like the pandemic was going to mess things up.
I really can’t wait to blog more about my progress as I go. I’m currently working towards prototyping and other stuff. We have to keep working and trying right?
See you in my next post :)