Week 4 has come to an end already. Can you believe it? The way we scaled through ehn, it can only be supernatural. So, there's this really cool feature of the Side Hustle BootCamp that gives budding start-ups in the BootCamp the opportunity to pitch our businesses before the ever-gallant Garfield of Side Hustle Internship, Nigeria. I've culled it: The Review Call.

Sounds distinguished right? But really, it is hectic and I kid you not. It actually feels exactly like that tv show, The Dragons' Den. If you've watched so much as an episode I'm sure that you found many contestants hilarious 😂 but I assure you that when you're the one on the hot seat, nothing can be so bereft of humor. Our turn had been a long time coming…we were rescheduled multiple times till a date came that no man could change. Ghen gheeen…🎥🎞️🎬

At this point, we knew we could not afford to show up ill-prepared before the ever-phenomenal Garfield of Side Hustle. You won't believe what we resolved to do - MAGIC. Yes, you read me right 🤭. We performed high-grade magic🧚 with our bare hands. Don't worry now, flow with me and I'll show you.

When we received the deliverables at the start of the week, it was with mixed feelings because we had some backlogs from the previous weeks' tasks. The major reason for this is a shortage of vital manpower - we are two sub-teams short of the actual required number. We're missing sub-teams like Mobile App Developers, Backend Developers and Microsoft Office. As if that wasn't enough, many sub-team members are still yet to realize their place and offer their skills to the growth of this organization. As a result, you have a scenario where a few persons (only one in some cases) have to bear the team responsibilities alone 😢😒

That doesn't sound like much work will get done in time, does it?🥵 Well, those were the lemons that Side Hustle handed us but read on to get a taste of the delicious lemonade we're making out of it 🍹

NEXT SET OF DELIVERABLES

You know the drill already. These are the tasks given to each sub-team to accomplish by the end of the week. Let's go!

Digital Marketing and Content Creation Task:

Create anticipation email contents to start sending to the 100 users signed up via the landing page. Continue uploading content according to the content calendar and the social media strategy. Complete work on the end-to-end marketing plan for your startup, to launch full scale in 4 weeks!

Delivered: Anticipation email contents are loading already for the Newsletter. Be sure to subscribe on our website to receive your copy fresh from the oven. If you're on Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn, connect with us. We've been uploading some really impactful content just for you.

About that end-to-end marketing plan,coughs. It is coming soon…anticipate 😂. We actually had to make a detour from our earlier course of action after a session with our beloved mentor, @PeculiarRichards helped us course-correct and pointed us in the right direction.

Thank you so much ma for all your help. As it stands now, we're carrying that over into Week 5 but we'll land it safely by God's grace. If you have any pointers or are a seasoned Digital Marketing boss, please reach out to us in the comments. Thank you.

By the way, look how good we're getting with our Canva designs.

We created a PowerPoint presentation slide to cover for the Microsoft Office sub-team that we currently do not have. We also created a tawk.to account, a Tidio account, a HubSpot account and some FAQs to help our CRM Team out. What can we say? We're great team players.

Challenges

1. It's the end-to-end marketing plan. You guessed it right.

Graphic Design Task:

Design infographic flyers according to content provided by the digital marketing team, for social media.

Delivered: A total of 7, count them, 7 flyers for the Content Team. Yup, we're on a roll.

Challenge

1. The usual. One and a half members 😄, no access to my laptop due to a work-related trip. Regardless, we delivered.

Product Design (UI/UX) Task:

Deliver complete design to the developers. Improve the design where necessary.

Delivered: Are you prepared for this? Are you sure? We have our landing page, onboarding and sign-up screens ready 💃🥵 and they're absolutely gorgeous.

Challenges

1. You know already. We have only two people working but God pass dem.
2. Also, it took a while to figure out a new color palette as the palette original outlined in the brand guide felt a bit too restricting if you know what I mean.
3. Furthermore, we went from a place of having a few designs to having multiple screen templates to the point where we needed external inference to decide on which screens made it to the FEs.

Product Management Task:

Manage and monitor the task management dashboard, and update tasks across all sub-teams. The PM Team lead should take reports from PMs assigned to each sub-team. Daily stand-ups should continue. Strongly note that you are to deliver an MVP for launching in 3 weeks.

Delivered: We got that JIRA board going, product road map and all. We've got some document uploads and activity checking out on there too.

Challenges:

1. We were late bloomers, we'll admit it and now we're in a race to catch up with the rest of the world on the Entré-Konnect side.
2. Some of us are learning to create a good rapport with the sub-team Leads in order to receive daily updates from them but there's a lot of room for improvement. We implore them to help make this process a seamless one.
3. A vast majority of the sub-team Leads don't know how JIRA works so, a sub-team Lead suggested pointing them to a YouTube video that could help solve the problem and...we're on it.

Video Animation Task:

Work with the content team and create a story streamlined with your product. Work in compliance with the brand guide in terms of colors, fonts, etc.

Delivered: We're on a mini-vacation, literally 😂. The Content Team is cooking up something frightful for us to do but we're confident that whatever it turns out to be, we've got this.

By the way, you can view the soft brand launch video animation that we created on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Challenges

1. Same old, same old. One person is running this entire show.

Quality Assurance Task:

Carry out test cases according to the flow. Test prototype.

Delivered: Carried out test cases for the landing page and onboarding screens. Doubt you'll understand it but here goes…

Challenges

1. Did we have challenges? I don't think so.
2. Oh yeah, some of the screens came in a bit late but that's okay. We understand and we gatchyu.

Customer Relationship Management Task:

With the HubSpot account, implement the email marketing system in collaboration with the digital marketing team.

Delivered: Hmmmm. Let's just jump and pass, shall we?

Challenges

1. What is Tidio bot sef talk less of HubSpot? 🤔

Frontend Development Task:

Commence Implementation of the UI design to at least 80%. Ensure 100% compliance to design.

Delivered: A beautiful landing page designed on the website, as requested.

Challenges

1. The last minute magic almost didn't work.

Data Analytics Task:

Complete work on the reporting dashboard using endpoints from the backend developers. For Teams without BE - Work on Sales Performance Analysis of competitive products in your industry.

Delivered: A comprehensive data chart on Maven Toys Sales Dashboard.

Challenges

1. It took a lot to get this dashboard out but we came, we saw and we conquered. As stated earlier, we do not have a Back-End Development team so we had to work on Sales Performance Analysis of competitive products in your industry. We are yet to find Sales Performance Data of a product in our industry but we analyzed the data of Mavin Toys Sales and provided a beautiful analysis and dashboard of their sales data.

A SUBJECTIVE NARRATION OF THE REVIEW CALL

A little back story…our slot was 9pm on Friday last week. As diligent people, some of us were on the Google Meet call as early as 8:30pm. Another start-up team was scheduled for that time but they went MIA 😂. We were all waiting. I've never been in a Google Meet call that was so silent. At some point, I had to speak up to check that all was well.

Moving on, at 8:49pm, Garfield got tired of waiting for them and called on us to take on the hot seat. You should have seen acrobatics on our Telegram group page. The Project Managers sub-team Lead that was to present was 5 minutes away from getting home. Our Assistant Team Lead was on the road. Team Lead was just getting in from work. Hei! See shiver 🥶. Naso we devise Jackie Chan moves sharp sharp🤸. Digital Marketing and Content Creation sub-team Lead shared the PowerPoint presentation slides on her screen while the Team Lead anchored the introduction (by the side of the road) to hold the ground till the PM could get herself together. At some point ehn, e be like say we wan dey over yarn. Garfield sef no gree ask question 🤐

Eventually, one of the charts made by our wonderful Data Analysts caught Garfield's attention and he started engaging the Data Analytics sub-team lead (shout out bro). Then he moved on to the Product Designers and finally the Frontend Developers. Now, this is the part where we celebrate ourselves for our ability to "work well under pressure" 😉 even when we no plan am like dat. Our PM Team Lead did not even need to speak because others rose gallantly to the occasion👏.

As you can tell from my mood, Garfield absolutely loved us and our work 💛. He made a few very welcome cogent suggestions for particular sub-teams. It's safe to say that if The Review Call was The Dragons' Den, Entré-Konnect would be heavily financed right now 😂💪💰. After all, what God cannot do does not exist!!!!! 💃💃🕺🕺

APPRECIATION

First, our unreserved praises are to the God of all flesh forevermore. We send out our hearty appreciation to Garfield and the entire Side Hustle Internship team for the opportunity given to us to make an impact in the lives of entrepreneurs all around Africa. Big cheers 🥂 to our Team Lead, the Assistant Team Lead, all our amazing and beautifully talented sub-team Leads and every member of start-up 5. Entré-Konnect is going global and you're soaring right along with it, so don't get tired. Let's launch out strong.

To all our fierce supporters, well-wishers and sponsors in diaspora (current and future), we welcome you to the new world. We love you so much and we want you to know that we're taking over together.

Thank you for reading. Don't forget to follow us on all socials, like our posts and subscribe to the Newsletter on our website. And please, your comments and reactions are very much welcome.

See you next week! Byeeeee.