In an interview session with Abiola the following were the challenges that has deterred her financial success. These challenges were prior to the financial training.

1. 1. Being a single mother and only bread winner
2. 2. The largest expense she suffers is the payment of school fees
3. 3. Zero knowledge on how money works.

With the training, Abiola has been able to learn the following in her own words:

1. 1. Learning all about overhead costs and how it affects pricing of products
2. 2. Difference between income and profits
3. 3. The importance of having an ‘emergency funds’
4. 4. Difference between operating capital and personal funds
5. 5. Budgeting
6. 6. Insurance and benefits to small business
7. 7. How to access affordable Healthcare.
8. 8. How to explore collaborations to increase visibility and revenue
9. 9. Marketing and Packaging tips

Abiola is an ardent saver and even while she has no prior financial knowledge, being a single parent has taught her to always save to be able to meet the needs of her children. Hence, she is a ‘banked’ customer, able to use technology to transact which has further opened up her business as more people do business with her now, she also saves with the traditional thrift collector in the form of Ajo.

With the Seed Grant, Abiola took to heart the training module on learning to spot trends and build layers of offerings to customers. In her trade of selling frozen foods – fish and prawns, she mentioned that some of her customers usually complain of having to go into the market to buy fresh produce to make their foods; since she services more working class and the educated demography; she decided to bring the fresh and complementary produce (tomatoes, fresh pepper, vegetable oil, palm oil, maggi and other food stuffs) to them in her shop and even went further to further simplify the process by making available fresh blended pepper in a variety of ways for her customers.

Conclusively, we can say that, the Seed Grant allowed Abiola introduce new product line to complement her existing products and she mentioned that this has not only increased her existing product sales but has also increased her customer base as she is also able to meet with more orders and also initiated an Emergency Fund account.

She is a happy business woman, who believes that all she has learnt will be put to good use to enable her build the business of her dreams. She is also a debt-free business woman and is quite excited with the fact that having started her business with N50,000 she can confidently say her business is worth twice the amount she started with as capital. And she believes this is just the beginning since she implemented the new insights she gained on personal finance to her own finances and business.