In the first episode of #FailureStories, we talk to content creator and business woman, Ibidunni Temitope, known online as Pasheda, about how she failed in two different instances when starting her entrepreneurial journey. Pasheda also shares the lessons she learned from those experiences on financial discipline, growing a spine, and knowing the ins and outs of your business.

Let’s dive in!

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Let’s talk. Who are you, and what do you do?

My name is Pasheda. I’m a content creator, business strategist, and serial entrepreneur. I own an event production business and a jewellery business. I’m a co-partner with a footwear brand, a female brand, and I also own a makeup artistry business.

Oh, wow, that’s really impressive. Can you share an instance where you failed at a project, business, or product? 

Funny enough, I have had two businesses fail so far, and I will share lessons from them.

I’ve always been business-minded. My first business was in secondary school. That’s just how industrious I’ve been. In uni, I started doing makeup for people. Over the process of that, people always asked me to recommend makeup products to them. We were in a private school, so accessing makeup products was not easy. We were not allowed to leave school and barely had shopping centres around us, so I started selling makeup products.

I would come home during the holidays, go to trade fair markets, buy makeup, and sell back in school. Soon, I took contacts from the trade fair and started doing dropshipping. So, when somebody needed a product in school, I would call my supplier. This business grew beyond school. So, my first instance of actual business failure was with this business.

What happened? 

Somebody ordered products from Sokoto. I’ll never forget. She ordered about a hundred thousand naira worth of products. This was in 2016, so, that was a lot of money back then. I called my supplier, paid them, and got somebody to pick it up but for some weird reason, the products never got to the customer. I couldn’t reach the driver and that was it. So, I was in debt of over a hundred thousand, and she wasn’t finding it funny., I was able to pay off the debt, but at the time, I wasn’t mentally strong enough to process it, so I shut down that business. It was called Sheda’s Beauty and Glam. 

I think that opened my eyes to the amount of risk I was putting myself up for. That was my first encounter with failure, and I took the lessons from that. 

Wow. You said there was another business? 

Yeah. Sometime in 2018, no, 2017, I started having some weird skin issues from nowhere. I spoke to a friend’s mom and she recommended black soap. She made the black soap for me by herself, and the skin issues started clearing up. I returned to my friend’s mom and instead of giving me the soap, she taught me how to make it. The thing about using something that works is that people start to ask you questions, right? 

So, I started making soap for people. I didn’t start a full-on business. I’ll just collect their container. I’ll make soap and give them. And then one day I was scrolling through Instagram and saw an organic skincare class. I registered for the class, and after the class, I told my dad, I wanted to start a skincare business. He helped me source the raw materials, I found someone to print the bags for the business and designed a logo and that was how the business started.

Soon, I expanded from selling just black soap to selling body scrubs and oils, but the black soap was the best seller.

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How did you encounter failure in this business? 

My first encounter with failure in that business was when I had a bad batch. The thing about mixing things is that if anything goes slightly wrong, the entire batch is gone. So, I had a bad batch. There was nothing wrong with the product itself, just the smell. And for some reason, I thought it only affected a few products within the batch. right? So I took those out and gave them to friends and family. The remaining within the batch, I placed them on sale and oh my God, I had about five people message me to swear for me. There was this particular lady in Abuja who I will never forget. She was so upset. I told her there was nothing wrong with the product, but sent her two new soaps, a body scrub, and body oil. Funny enough, she became one of my biggest customers. She used the product and she liked it. And there is nobody that she did not refer to me. Even to date, she still texts me like, “Madam, madam, I want soap.”

Why were things different this time around? 

Because I had failed at the business before, I had the stamina to not shut down. It can be very hard when people get upset with you, especially when it’s a genuine mistake, right? I did not intentionally send out bad products. So, I had to bear the loss of it by sending them new products and even extra just to make sure that they felt catered for. And what that did for me was that it built trust in my brand.

I hadn’t gone to business school at the time so I didn’t realise I was building a great community and trust in my brand. So, after that happened,  that business thrived. Everybody was telling everybody! I went to my first trade fair, and we sold out that day. That was the first time I made a million in one day, it was crazy! 

It started growing too fast. My small apartment could not take it anymore. In the meantime, I had decided to go back to school for an MBA. I had a full-time job at the time. I was running this business.I was still doing makeup, so it was a lot. I moved my things back home and started using my dad’s house as a factory, and this was the beginning of the end for this business. My parents were so supportive, that they began handling everything, from supplies to shipments to packaging. 

And then a tragedy happened. In 2021, I lost my parents. And not only did I lose my parents, they robbed the house. So they took my raw materials. They took their phones. And I realised, oh, shit. I don’t have any way to contact my distributors. I don’t know them. And because my parents are not in that house anymore. It also meant that I didn’t have a factory to function from.

By the time I was done dealing with my grief, I was like, okay, so if I want to go back to business now, where am I going to make my product? I sure as hell don’t want to be coming back to this house. The house was a traumatic space for me, and where I was living was not suitable for the business. My friend advised me to take a break, so I never officially announced Buona closing. I just took a step back.

And I never took a step back for some reason.

In addition to that, I realised that organic skincare was not all that great, and to make more money from Buona, I would have to do things that were unethical, like lightening creams. I knew that was not the legacy I wanted to leave for myself so I left it. 

What things would you say you learned from both businesses, that creators and other businesses can learn? 

Okay, from the first business, my biggest lesson was to grow a spine. I told myself two years down the line that, yeah, you should have grown a spine because I ran. I panicked. I shut down the business.

You said: “I’m not doing it again.” 

Yes. I will never forget that day. It shook me to my core, and I was like, yep, I’m out. Not interested. But yeah, what I would have said to myself was, “grow a spine.” I would have made that 100k back because I had a good thing going on. I was in a school environment where my services were needed. And if I kept on to that business, even after graduation, I would have had a lot of alumni clients, because students in private schools generally show loyalty to their own.

So the biggest lesson from there was to grow a spine. Because failure is normal. You win some, you lose some. That’s just the fact.

From the second business, I learned that you need to have structure. You need systems; you can’t be winging it in business. It will bite you in the ass. Before, I would see money in my account, remove the money for restocking, and spend the rest. That’s why by the time the incident happened, I didn’t have any money to rent a space to continue my business. 

So structure, processes, and systems, are very important. Double down on your finances. Know what is yours and what is for the business. Business money is not your money, and that’s a huge mistake a lot of small business owners make. Because it’s easy to just live your day-to-day life. Money is coming into your hand. It’s not your money, my dear. Pay yourself a salary. Do you know what it means to be looking at maybe like two, or three million in your business account and you’re broke? It takes a lot of discipline. 

With my present business, Zida Jewelry, I have built so much structure that God forbid something happens to me today and somebody needs to take over that business, they don’t need to know much. Everything you need to know about how my business runs is written down somewhere. Every tiny detail. 

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What have been the results? 

It’s amazing. One of the things that I used to worry about in my earlier business endeavours was how do I make sales? How do I do this? I’ll give partial credit to building a personal brand unintentionally. I’ve never had to worry about sales because I put all my energy into making sure everything runs on its own system and I can put my energy into other things.

My jewelry business is barely a year old and it has given me an insane amount of business success. Within our first six weeks, we did seven figures.

When I call figures in business, I’m like, figures are figures, they sound great, but I need you to know that when I started this business, the most expensive products we sold were about 5,000 Naira. 

I’ve paid my dues and I’m still learning because business learning never ends. It also helps that I went to business school. A lot of things are practical. I know what I’m doing. There’s no aspect of any of my businesses that I’m winging at the moment. If I fail or if I make a mistake, I can point out what needs to change. So, both process-wise, ease of business has been great. Also in terms of revenue and profit,  it’s been amazing.

I can’t lie. I’m grateful that I had those experiences. 

Any final words? 

I don’t think that failure is a bad thing because if you do not fail, you won’t realise what you need to get. You have to be comfortable with rejection and failure. If you can’t face your failures, a lot of work holds a lot of people back. I think we need to de-stigmatize failure.