A couple months ago, I participated in a video challenge where I shared a bit of Islepreneur’s beginnings with the hope of telling the entire story at a later date. Well, that date has come 🙂 Read more to learn Islepreneur’s story.
The Beginning
The idea for Islepreneur came about when I was a student at St. George’s University, where I completed a Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology. Part of the requirements for completing the program is to do a project, in the final year, which would provide a solution to a real life problem.
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Truth is, it took me a long time to come up with a concept for my project because I had no intention to do just any project which would have gotten me good grades. I wanted to be innovative to build something worthwhile; a platform (whatever it is) that would be useful and be able to developed into something great after leaving school. It would also be full of worth and can be used to give back to the Grenadian community.
My classmates/friends and I felt the same way about what our project would eventually turn out to be.
Why Entrepreneurs?
Tourism and the service industry have always been areas of interests. In fact, Hospitality Management was what I planned on studying the moment I decided to attend university. The whole idea of meeting and interacting with different cultures excited me and it’s amazing how much you can learn from one person! I opted not to pursue hospitality and decided to do Information Technology.
Also, the fact that tourism is a major contributor to the economic growth of our tri-island state – Grenada, Carriacou & Petite Martinique – led me to start thinking about a project which can be useful especially during our tourism season. My thoughts were that we all should play a role to ensure that our tourism industry is not only existing, but continuously developing so that the people (locals) will continue to benefit from it.
After much thought about what I should do, I decided that I will play my role by promoting unique products and services by Grenadian entrepreneurs. The aim is to create an online space to connect local entrepreneurs with visitors. Through this space, visitors would get a preview of what is available or they will easily know where to go when looking for items to carry back home and services to experience while here.
Entrepreneurs would now have a platform to showcase their products and services, specifically small business owners who are unable to afford to do extensive marketing. Though it was no easy job to build, I must say that it worked out really well, with God’s help. 🙂
The Launch
After leaving school, a year and a few months later, I finally decided to get back into the ‘project’. This time, the platform will be a website/blog where any/everyone can connect with Grenadian entrepreneurs, view their products and services and read about their stories. This blog will also be a resource for existing and upcoming entrepreneurs to help with building their brand and with entrepreneurship.
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It was difficult for me to publish the first post and share it for every/anyone to see. Fear of not getting it right is a constant battle for me. I wanted the world to know what I was doing but I was afraid to step out. Could you imagine? Lol. Thankfully, I have gotten a lot better. Since I made the first step, I continued stepping out and looking for new and exciting things and people to post and can never wait for the next time to hit ‘publish’.
Graduation photos by Tyndale Studio.
Let’s chat: Do you have a business idea and not sure of how to get it off the ground? Comment below.
