On Becoming World-Class: Pitfalls Along The Way

There's a saying that goes, "all work and no play..." you know the rest. How true is this? Is there a kind of play that slows down a man's creativity? Is it possible to be over-hyped yet unable to work productively? I'll let you be the judge of that. My teammates and I share all about our week with a heavy heart full of mixed feelings.

I'll start.

Victoria, The Lead:

Having prayed and worked hard for my Team's growth, I wanted to see mighty trees springing up, naturally. Things were looking up, we were making progress and are still The World-Class Team.

I had to show my Team tough love in order to help get them back on track and away from the pitfall of unproductivity.

I just want to say that this week, I learned, I grew, I improved myself, my leadership skills, my people skills and took initiative like never before. It doesn't hurt to try new things. That's how we find out what works best. As I said, I have learned and I am grateful for the opportunity to impact the lives of the people around me positively.

Thank you.

In Aishah's words:

The Second Week of the Bootcamp began with a lot of calm. I was steadily getting used to the calmness the weekend brought, but trust me! Drey did his best again. Ladies and gentlemen, this time around the breakfast was served hot with spicy side dishes. The 100 followers got me, but well, we move!!!

I have always wanted to own a blog, but I never mustered up enough courage to do so. I admire people who could share their personal or work experiences through their blogs and it ends there for me. I didn't bother to take things further.

Seeing the week's projects however, piqued my interest in blogging. Having to settle down for a particular industry was a tough decision to make. We kept joggling between Food and E-commerce.

The week's project was a great challenge but I fought hard to beat it. I didn't meet up to the deadline but I'm glad I was able to submit it. I'll definitely do better next week.

I look forward to launching my own blog soon. All thanks to Side Hustle!

From Mayowa:

I thought to myself at the beginning of the week, "oh I didn't do well last week, but I've got this week all planned I'm going to give in my best. Little did I know that I wasn't well prepared for it.

The week began with @drey posting the project for the week and everyone was flabbergasted and in awe of the task. We braced ourselves and started to work. Majorly our ever-inspiring team leader @tori_ammy and other fireful team members like @Oyinlola our assistant team leader @Aisha and others too. I couldn't make it for most goggle meet meetings due to some stuffs I hope will be sorted out soon. I got updated from the post on our group team.

We got our task schedule for the week. I didn't even know where to start my topic. At first but I've found out one thing since I started this program. "Where there's a will, there's a way". I surfed the internet for inspiration on what to write and images to design. Though I submitted it late I must say I learned, I'm improving and getting better. Thanks to the World-class team, thanks to Side Hustle. I remain my humble self @Mayowa

From the stables of Oyinlola:

All digital marketers and content creators were given a task to launch a blog using Blogger or WordPress for any industry and the blog must have a minimum of 6 articles. 700 words each which must include images, and must have a minimum of 100 readers. We all expressed shock at the part where we must have a minimum of 100 readers 😹😹😹

That same day our team leader called for a meeting so we could meet and discuss our task together. We decided on our regular meeting time which is always by 9 pm. Around 9 pm few of us showed up and we discussed the task. We decided to brace up so we can get this week's task done. We decided on WordPress as our website host. We came up with 7 industries we could provide content about. Then we had a poll for what industry we would like to write about and food and eCommerce emerged with a tie.

So we decided to seek the opinion of the rest of our team members who couldn’t make it to the meeting via google meet. So we ended the meeting with goodnight dreams farewell. That same day we were given an assignment by our group leader to make research about WordPress and how it operates. So after much suggestion and another meeting on which preferred industry we want to use because even when we threw the question to the rest of our team, eCommerce and food still emerged as a tie. At the end of our meeting on Tuesday, we were given another assignment by our team leader again. You can see our team leader doesn’t get tired of giving us assignments.

You can see for yourself. I didn't tell a lie. So we were told to select 3-5 categories and topics for the food industry and eCommerce industry. A lot of people only gave answers to the food industry that was how the food industry emerged as the winner too. Then our group leader assigned tasks to each of us. At our meeting on Thursday, we came up with a name and tagline for our website: FIFTY SHADES OF FOOD…FOR THE MODERN FOODIE

We're a great team, right? as always, our team leader assigned us the task of creating vision and mission statements, brand goals, brand identity, what we are about, brand story, brand USP, and brand color. We all brought our best ideas to the table and came up with some great answers. We're not done yet but we're making good progress on this week's task. So watch out for our blog even Drey dey feel us 😻😻

From Zaynab:

This week started with the most unimaginable task given to us. We were asked to create a blog and have 100 readers before the end of the week. I almost cried because this task is so overwhelming. But as they say: what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.

As someone who's involved in another startup, it was like a double headache for me. Thus my late submission of my task. We all met severally for the deliberation on what we wanted our blog to be about. Some people wanted e-commerce while others wanted food. But at the end of the day, food took the lead. My fav. I was so excited because I can effortlessly write more than 700 words on food.

My topic wasn't all that interesting, sadly. I was to write about foods that people eat constantly that might be doing some harm. I won't lie, this wasn't the topic I wanted because I'm not one kind of nutrition guru. Just let me cook and eat. But I couldn't reject the work, I just had to take responsibility. So I went to different platforms to research the common foods that cause health problems and find a way to craft a successful blog.

Sadly, I submitted it late, but at least I enjoyed writing it and being a part of this remarkable project.>

Susan speaks:

The week started even before I knew it did…and boom, week 2 project came! My ‘Team Magical’ as I choose to call them, cos they create magic with whatever task we are given, were saddled with the task of creating a blog using Blogger or WordPress for any industry of choice, minimum of 6 articles by the end of the week and the article must contain 700 words each, must include images and must have a minimum of 100 readers!!!

Here we go again! We had a series of meetings, decided on WordPress instead of Blogger and the race against time started. We took a vote on what industry to pick and Food industry got the highest vote, yeah! I would go with food anytime any day, who wouldn’t? Our team lead, who is ever so sweet and considerate, shared our task schedule with the team and we all got to work.

Unfortunately, stuff happened and I was not able to beat the deadline for submission and my team lead came with koboko!!! Well, I know I got to keep pushing because the door of success opens to those who push hardest.

Here's Where We're At

Find the link to our website here. This is where you can read our blog posts

See for yourself:

Challenges

1. The fact that we had to wait for other team members to make decisions made us have a short time to execute our tasks.
2. A level of complacency that almost cot us our task.
3. The fact that a few are still shouldering the weight of the unresponsive members of the Team seems to be slowly but surely getting to us.
4. It turns out the name we chose was already in use by another food blog so we had to come up with a new name. The new name we came up with is Eighty Strokes of Food. You can find the link here

Our Take-Aways

• Never give up, not even on yourself.
• Don't put off for later, what you can do now.
• Learn to be a good team-player.
• Take responsibility for yourself.
• If you have a will, you'll find a way.

Final Thoughts

We are growing. This is our process. The path won't always be rosy but we choose to keep learning.

You can encourage us, give a shout out or just express your own thoughts in the comments.

With Love,

The World-Class Team.