Back in 2019, I was serving in benue state. I had my own apartment, with a mattress, fan and some shelves.

I was hungry and craving garri and egusi soup. I had a gas and pots to cook. I had plates and cutlery to eat the meal too.

There was just one problem.

I had no idea how to cook egusi soup. I didn't even know what ingredients I needed to cook the soup.

But i was determined to cook and eat egusi soup.

So I went to the market to buy egusi soup things aka things I had no idea about.

From my experience eating egusi soup, I know that some leaves were used in preparing it so I decided to start there.

I asked a woman who sold vegetables in the market that I wanted to buy vegetables for egusi soup.

She asked me which ones. I was clueless.

She asked me if I wanted ugwu or bitter leaf or Anyara leaves. I asked which ones were used for cooking egusi.

When she told me all of them I knew I was really in trouble.

Thankfully, a lady who had been watching me suffer since decided to help me out.

She asked me if I had ever cooked egusi soup before and I said no.

She laughed, brought out a sheet of paper and wrote for a few minutes and then handed the paper to me.

When I looked at the paper i realised that it was a list of things to buy for egusi soup and a recipe for how to cook egusi soup.

At the back of the paper was her name and phone number with the instructions to call her if I had any trouble while cooking.

I was beyond grateful. I bought the soup things with confidence and without stress.

I got home followed the recipe the lady had given me to the letter and in a few hours my egusi was ready.

The funny thing is my corper friends came around and ate my egusi. They couldn't believe that it was me who cooked the soup.

I called the lady who gave me the recipe to tell her everything and thanked her for helping me.

What did this teach me about building a profitable business?

Building a profitable business is just like cooking. To cook anything you need to have a recipe you can follow.

A recipe shows you step by step what you need to do, what tools or ingredients you need and how to out everything together to achieve your desired result.

Most importantly, it saves you from wasting time, being frustrated and achieving nothing even after all your efforts.

If you would like a recipe to building a profitable online business from scratch, my friend Jonathan Melody who has two businesses making N30 million per year has prepared a recipe showing you how he did this.

You can get his recipe for a profitable online business here: https://ibm.gr8.com/