REPORT OF BSB MEETING HELD ON THE 29TH OF JUNE, 2018.
THEME: BUSINESS STRUCTURE AND EVALUATION
The meeting started at exactly 12noon with a worship and prayer session. After which Fola Ogunsola introduced Reginald Ezeh for an interactive online session on “Small Group Business Networking & Referral”, he spoke in detail about referral groups emphasizing that referral groups are means of adverts, encourages business growth through word-of-mouth advertisement and business card balloting. He also reinforced that an ideal referral group’s meeting shouldn’t be more than one hour and business membership in each group shouldn’t be more than 45 and less than 10.
Procedure: 1. The core of the referral group is to make business owners come together once a month or as frequent as it’s convinient for them to meet and discuss opportunities.
In the meeting, 15 to 20 minutes will be set aside for business owners to have a brief interaction, the participants are allowed to introduced themselves, tell people what they each do and who their customers are. E.g. if you are a small company owner, your introduction must carry what you do, how you offer the service and the result you get in what you do. This enhances service referral system in which people who are in need of a particular service are directed to members of the group who are capable of rendering such service.
The advantage of the forum is to create a relationship among people and also to make them sales agent of one another. The most important thing is that your business must be well spelt without ambiguity. In addition it allows business partnership. Another advantage is that it minimizes advertisement budget.
- The second part of this referral group procedure is the exchange of business cards by collective submission, and people pick the cards at random. The goal is how can I help other people’s businesses, what can I do to draw business to my Group member not just what can I get from the group. For example if you are 30 in a group, 29 others are searching for a way to find clients that would patronize your service or products. To get commitment to the group’s objective of growing individual’s businesses, a measure is put in place to check and balance people who are passive in the forum; they are charged a little fine, this assists in achieving the aims of the business group by eradicating passiveness gradually and members are forced to know each other’s products and services.
- Also in the business referral group, a Coordinator must supervise the activities of the group and must be replaced every 6 months. He shall preside as the head of the referral group, he will be accountable for all meeting schedules.
Afterwards Fola Ogunsola took the seminar session on “Business Structure and Evaluation”. She started by discussing the following; the most common forms of business are Sole Proprietorship, Partnership and Corporation. A more recent development to these forms is the Limited Liability Company (LLC) and the Limited Liability Partnership (LLP), and business form comes with different tax consequences.
Sole Proprietorship
The simplest structure is the sole proprietorship, which usually involves just one individual who owns and operates the enterprise.
Partnership
Business owned and operated by several individuals. Partnership come in two varieties; general partnerships and limited partnerships. A limited partnership has both general and limited partners. The general partners own and operate the business and assume liability for the partnership, while the limited partners serve as investors only; they have no control over the company and are not subject to the same liabilities as the general partners.
Having emphasized the importance of proper structure & documentations for building sustainable businesses and accessing funds, she encouraged the audience to do business right by having the proper documentations. In addition, an evaluation list was passed around with details such as business registration, business plan, separate entity, statement of affairs, financial records etc. so as to enable business owners evaluate their businesses accordingly.
The third session was anchored by Wale Ogunsola who spoke about NUSA (Network United States of America). He admonished every BSB member to register their business names with NUSA as long as their businesses are registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission, have a corporate account, at least one year financials and N33,000 for the basic registration. While the enhanced registration requires two year financials and company profile and a higher amount as an addition to the basic level requirement.
He highlighted the benefits of joining the organization as:
- Each member will be delegated to a specialist
- Official trade accreditation
- Invitation to the USA
- Free access to commercial services
- Visa referral for senior executives and employees of firms etc.
After this session Fola Ogunsola gave four people the opportunity to each give an elevator pitch as a demonstration of Reginald Ezeh’s recommendation.
In addition, she made the following announcements;
- Those seeking jobs should send their CVs with passport photos to jobs@bsblinks.com
- Members are to correct their data so as to have the correct information in BSB record
- Members Data Forms were passed out to everyone present to be filled and returned as hardcopy or scanned and mailed to info@bsblinks.com
- She also mentioned that there will be free Business Advisory sessions on Wednesdays at No.2, Hameed Kasumu, Chevy View Estate, Off Chevron Drive, Lekki, Lagos.
Afterwards the closing prayer was done by Pastor Ayo Oyebanjo.
