More...

Everyday for the thief, one day for the owner.

More photos....

Pic 1 - St Louis

Pic 2 - Washington DC

Pic 3 - Minneapolis

Pic 1- A little boy in LA.

Pic 2 - also in LA

Pic 3 - US embassy in Berlin.

Pic 1. A man douses his eyes with water after an Austin police officer, right, sprayed him with pepper spray. Hundreds of protestors have taken control of I-35 in downtown Austin to protest the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.

Pic 2 - 4: Front of CNN head office.

Aliko Dangote is the richest African and the richest black person in the world with an estimated net worth of $10.9 billion. He owns the Dangote Group with interests in Cement and consumer products. His company currently employs more than 30,000 people across Africa and generated revenue in excess of $4 billion in 2017.

He owns a sugar refinery, flour mill, and cement production manufactures over 5 million tonnes of cement yearly. He also has interests in real estate, telecommunications, fertilizer, steel, and currently building an oil refinery which has the largest distiller in the world.

Dangote is the son of Alhaji Dantata who was the richest West African before his death in 1955. He currently has 3 daughters and an adopted son.

He is currently listed as one of the top 100 Most Influential People in the world by TIME Magazine and also listed as one of the Top 25 Businessmen in the World by CNDC in 2014.

Recently, he said his job is his hobby as he practically works up to 18 hours a day.

He said he rises before 5:30 a.m. every day and after prayers and running 10 kilometers, he is at the office by 8:30 a.m. putting in 18-hour days on a regular basis

See images of his private residence below.

Source: https://basetimes.com/2020/05/22/the-apartment-of-aliko-dangote-the-richest-black-man-in-the-world/

To take you back a bit.

As I said, I started some three weeks back. And I used WordPress to set up the blog.

Plugins I used in configuring the blog includes..

Yoast SEO - This is very important. It helps ensure my posts are properly SEO-optimized.

I also created a profit system that rewards writers who wish to publish content in my blog. You earn N100 for every post published and then N0.35 kobo for every view your post gets.

Easy WP SMTP - to enable sending of emails directly from my blog

Internal Link Juicer - To help with inbound linking (very important for Google). This is when I forget to do it myself.

Newsletter Plugin - to send emails to writers directly from the blog

SumoMe - to convert readers and visitors into subscribers (very important)

User Submitted Posts - For front end submission of posts by writers.

I am a content creator and have been earning money online from content for the past 5 - 6 years. A huge chunk of my startup company depends on content to thrive and it successfully gained traction because of the kind of content I produced. It was a highly niched content.

And this paved the way for my startup to begin exploring B2B opportunities late last year and the prospects have been amazing. However, on the verge of hitting a contract that would have paid up to N25 million (pure profit) in the month of March, the lockdown started and everything took a u-turn.

I lost the contract and my company has been on hold ever since. My business niche is going to pick up again but it might take a while.

That's the reason why I decided to pick up blogging.

You see, a lot of people tell you to blog about your passion and the money will follow. Well, not me. Money is my passion.

And just in case you are not aware, blogging is one of the most difficult business to engage in. It takes A LOT of work and planning. Plus you get to spend some hours of your time every day for you to succeed.

It is generally believed that it takes up to a year or two to really start profiting from your blog. Let's see how true this is.

I'll try to make my blog break even in the next few months.

The blog is an all-purpose blog but the majority of the contents I'll publish (and have been publishing) are related to starting and growing your small business using both online and offline strategies. At least I have been an entrepreneur for the past 7 - 8 years so I should know a thing or two to share.

I'll implore you to join me as I begin this journey into blogging.

As I progress, I'll share my discoveries, strategies, ideas, and all until I start making real money.

I just started some 3 weeks back but I have purchased the domain name for over a year now. I just purchased it and kept it because it sounded cool - two words and super easy to spell. Plus it's a .com domain name.

Feel free to implement my strategies in your blog, and also feel free to ask me questions.

Just in case, the name of the blog is BaseTimes.com

timibare:
This is nice....OP, good one

thanks

Palantir:


From the visits I made to a number of Coca-Cola bottling plants during my college days, the coke concentrates is provided by the Coca-Cola Hellenic Company in Ogun State (I think) to the various bottling plants around Nigeria. There water is added to the concentrate and the drink bottled.

The guys the bottle Coca-Cola in Nigeria are a franchise. These companies are not owned by Coca-Cola. The concentrate producing guys are the only company actually owned by Coca-Cola in Nigeria. Even in concentrate form, they still try to protect their intellectual property.

Interesting

In the mid 18th century, a man called John Stith Pemberton developed a unique and sweet carbonated drink which he later sold to Asa Griggs Candler in 1888 for $2,300 (valued at $63,958.21 today). Back then, this was pretty expensive for a formula.

Asa Candler did want to take any chances because acquiring a recipe for a whopping $2,300 was one of the biggest investments that needed protection. He started a secrecy project to guard his intellectual property in 1891.

According to Wikipedia, the founder of the formula John Pemberton, only shared this formula to just four persons before his death.

Candler’s company grew till 1919 when another guy called Ernest Woodruff purchased Candler’s company. And guess what? He actually used the recipe of Coca-cola as collateral for a bank loan he used in purchasing the company.

The only written formula was placed in the bank’s vault pending when the loan will be repaid.

And I guess the rumors were true. Only two people know the formula of Coca-Cola and they are anonymous employees who must not be together at any time. Mr. A does not know the part of the secret Mr. B knows and vice-visa.

The recipe for Coca-cola is stored in a large vault in Atlanta, Georgia. No one knows if there are copies of the recipe stored anywhere else.

So many mysteries and stories surrounding the secret of Coca-Cola. There was a story that in 1996, one of the great-grandsons of John Pemberton’s employee claimed he had the recipe written in his grandfather’s handwriting. During his divorce, his wife claimed he gave it to her as a wedding present hence, it’s hers.

But one of the formulas is known by many. It’s called coca leaf. And amazingly, only one company has the right to import the coca leaves in the US and yes, it’s not Coca-Cola. The company is called Stepan Co.

Coca Leaves
It’s illegal to plant coca leaves in the US because it’s the main ingredient in the production of cocaine. Ever wondered why Coca-cola became additive and had tremendous growth in the late 1800 and early 1900? It was laced with extracts of cocaine which is also a by-product of the coca leaves, part of Coca-Cola’s secret formulas.

Cocaine was eliminated from the Coca-cola’s recipe in 1903 but do you believe that? Personally, I still think Coca-cola is damn addictive. In fact, writing this, I crave for one.

Only Coca-cola has the right to purchase the processed coca leaves from Stepan Co. I say process because they have to extract all the cocaine from the leaves before handing to Coca-cola. The cocaine extracts are then sold to pharmaceutical companies.

Columbia’s war on drugs.

America has been fighting a drug war in the plains of Columbia for years now. With all the resources and funding by the US government, why has the war not been over?

Some years ago, I read a fictional novel about a DEA official deeply involved in the pursuit of a drug lord in Columbia for years. The battle was tough but one day, he was captured by the drug cartel.

The cartel boss told him to reduce his chase because for now, he is attending to some important issues after which they can resume the cat and mouse game. The DEA official was angry. But the cartel boss explained to him how America wouldn’t actually eliminate the cocaine industry in Columbia because they needed the money.

The drug lord went on to ask him where does he think they invest their drug money? Of course the US. They invest in real estate and keep the American dollar flowing.

Well, this was just a fictional story.

But looking at it from another angle, one of America’s biggest conglomerate(and one of the biggest in the world), Coca-cola thrives on coca leaves produced in Columbia which is also used in producing cocaine.

Truth is, America cannot end the planting of coca leaves in Columbia because they need it. So I wonder if the drug war will actually end.

Well, cocaine, or no cocaine, Coca-cola has become one of the world’s biggest corporations headquartered in the US. The company’s revenue in 2018 was $31.85 billion with a market capitalization of roughly $188 billion.

I explained how you can become a shareholder of Coca-cola here and be a part-owner of this massive enterprise that has lasted more than 125 years.

Pic 1 - the vault where the secret ingredient is kept
Pic 2 - one of the known recipe called coca leaves which is also used in producing cocaine
Pic 3 - an executive holding the box where the secret is stored.
Pic 4 - Stepan, the only company allowed to import coca leaves into the US

Source: BaseTimes
https://basetimes.com/2020/05/17/coca-cola-and-their-most-guarded-secret-in-the-world/

BIZHAQER:
Good post. In line with this, I write simple, short and actionable business lessons EVERYDAY. You can subscribe for free here: ekene.substack.com

Thank you.

It’s amazing how organizations in this current age still resort to cold-calling as a marketing approach. This is despite the known fact that the concept of cold calling is dead or almost dying. However, there are methods of cold calling that can be seen as less spammy and aggressive.

It centers around carrying out extensive research on prospective customers before reaching out to them via email or phone. This involves trying to get a head start by identifying their needs, and possibly matching these needs with if the solution you are selling is relevant to their need and will actually help them solve their issue.

The problem with this is that a lot of people are somewhat allergic to cold-calling. No matter how perfect your research is, a few might listen to you but a lot more others might just start perceiving your approach as spammy and might decline your offer even before you get to speak to them.

But I am not here to talk about cold calling. There is a better approach to marketing and getting new customers who will not only give you a listening ear but become a paying customer and actually stay with you for long. This method is called social selling.

It’s a unique art a salesperson use in building relationships with their prospects using social media platforms and subsequently converting these prospects to paying customers. Social selling knocks off the aspect of interrupting the daily lives of your prospects with cold calls and emails trying to hard-sell.

In short, it’s not enough to just get your product out there. It’s not enough to simply get eyeballs on what you’re selling. Trust, not exposure, is the currency of today. Of course, this raises one critical question: how do you build trust?

Let’s look at it this way;

You are 50 in number and you are all stranded in a remote island. To get things in motion without conflict, you’ve all decided to select or vote for a leader. Now the options are a few professionals indicating their interest to lead.

I bet the vote will result in the following,

Doctor
Lawyer
Engineer
Sales rep

The majority of the people will vote for the Doctor as number one to lead them with the sales rep getting the least number of votes.

It’s almost a human thing not to trust sales reps. Especially those who show up on your doorsteps trying to sell that new product (you haven’t even heard about). It’s natural for you to say within you…”I know you’re saying all these just to get me to buy. I ain’t falling for that this time”.

How to build trust in social media
Now, this depends on your preferred social media platform. A lot of people make a killing on Facebook and seamlessly generate business leads from it. Personally, I find it difficult to see Facebook as a spot for lead generation. I see the platform more of a family and friends virtual hangout spot where we share moments that make us social and connect more often than we do physically.

I see my lead generation platform on LinkedIn. Naturally, its a platform with over 500 million users ALL professionals looking for something to buy, sell, or thought leaders. Others are there to connect with other professionals but I believe it still ends in sales.

Building trust in a place like LinkedIn will guarantee you two things.

Firstly, you’ll keep getting more connections and followers so your pool of prospects doesn’t run dry.

Secondly, your existing connections and followers will trust your brand enough to become paying customers.

You can build trust on social media using your communication strategy and your intellect. I’ll explain more about these later.

Always share top quality contents

It doesn’t matter if you are a food blogger or a YouTuber, or passionate about words, your content needs to be topnotch – always!.

Your content represents your brand. If you want your brand to be perceived as an authority, then let your content reflect that. Note that when I am talking about the brand, it might be your personal brand (person) or your organizational brand.

Your content should always expose your followers to the information they have always wanted. Something they have always wanted to learn.

Remember the 80/20 rule? This rule talks about how you should always ensure 80% of your content is informative and educative while 20% can talk about your brand.

Over 90% of my posts on LinkedIn always talk or refer to my company’s brand usually at the end of my posts. I am not necessarily trying to sell, but I am trying to create the perception that:

“Hey, if you enjoyed what I have just posted, know that XYZ brand is behind it. So, if you TRUST my post to always give you the information sought, then you can trust XYZ brand to always provide you with solutions you need”

This is the reason while I keep getting calls from prospects without actually selling.

Another upside to this is when any of my connections or followers make a public request for a solution to any issue, I can easily swoop in and “sell” my company’s service. And a few hours later, a deal has been struck.

Why? Trust was already established via my contents. That is social selling at work.

If you can establish your brand as a thought leader, you may become a go-to resource. This should build up a strong following on social media and, hopefully, lead to more opportunities to strengthen your position. While followers with an interest in your content may not necessarily be customers, your brand is sure to be to the fore of their minds if they ever need what your company provides.

Posting quality content consistent builds a “hunger” in your followers. They always anticipate for more content from you and get antsy when you do not drop content on time.

Keep nurturing engagements

It’s not enough to drop powerful and compelling content on social media and then abandon your followers when they have questions or just giving you some accolades.

If someone asks a question regarding what you have posted, answer the question. If someone asks a question OUTSIDE the confines of what you have posted, do well to also provide an answer. If someone just comments with a compliment, do well to appreciate the gesture.

When you provide answers and encourage engagements on your content, people will have no choice but to trust you and will feel comfortable using your services or products. The reason is that they now have the full confidence that you’ll do everything possible to make yourself available to them when they ask questions or encounter any problems.

This process makes you answerable to your audience which is one of the major pillars of relationship building and trust.

Source: https://basetimes.com/2020/05/16/understand-social-selling-and-how-to-profit-from-it/

tommyken:

If only you know the power of the information you just released, you would have sold this secrete to business moguls for over a million naira.

Please are you a statiscian or Data analyst? Am interested in a career in that field as a statistics undergraduate in my final year.

Thanks for your comment. I am just a writer.

ManyThanks:
Op I see wisdom in your post..

Thank you.

Nigeria has over 21 ports with Lagos alone having up to 5 seaports including Tin Can Island port and Apapa port. In fact, Apapa port accounts for more than 30% of all cargo shipments in all Nigerian seaports combined.

Most companies have domiciled their main offices and warehouses in Lagos because of access to some of the busiest ports in the country. It’s easier and more convenient to move goods imported to Nigeria straight to your warehouse right there in Lagos than the rest of the country.

This trend brought about more companies moving to Lagos and with it, more people. Now, everyone wants to relocate to Lagos because of a growing perception that there are more opportunities in Lagos than anywhere else in Nigeria.

I wouldn’t blame them. The Lagos state government has been known to attract investors and companies with friendly economic environments, policies, and access to more profitable private/public sector partnerships.

The result of this is an influx of population. Companies began fighting for dominance. After all, if you can dominate Lagos, you can probably dominate Nigeria.

The coast is fixed, the levels all clear, and the competition began. This created more room for real estate developers to “expand” Lagos which has also led to more and more people moving to Lagos.

Now, Lagos now has an estimated 21 million people (2016 estimates) making it the largest city in Africa.

Little wonder, every startup wants to be domiciled in Lagos. Every foreign company wishing to expand its global presence to Nigeria prefers Lagos.

But what startups and SMEs don’t know…

Firstly, Lagos has the highest number of micro-enterprises in Nigeria – 3,224,324 SMEs. The least is Kwara state with less than 300 SMEs. This means the competitive rate for businesses to thrive in Lagos is way more than average.

Secondly, in Lagos, over 70% of the population spend between 60 – 80% of their earnings on rents. The average salary in Lagos is between N50,000 – N250,000. This is less than $700 USD. And most of these income earners have the capacity to save no more than N20,000 monthly. They spend more trying to survive than purchase luxury.

Despite the seemingly attractive large population, Lagos might not really produce the number of customers you think your business can get. It is just like an illusion.

Reasons why starting a business outside Lagos is more profitable

Despite the large population, Lagos state has a population with a not so impressive buying power (when it comes to the average Lagosian). So, as a small business, when you offer your services or products to the public, be rest assured there are over 100 other SMEs offering the exact same service to your target market a few kilometers from you.

Pricing is one key factor that greatly influences Nigerian SME. Most times, you are forced to keep reducing your price just to become the preferred choice for consumers. This is often because of excess competition. If you are outside Lagos, your chances of fighting a strong pricing war with competitors are pretty slim.

The cost of getting a business location is pretty high in Lagos. Getting a shop or an office in Lagos can actually be nerve-wracking. Because of the population influx, the real estate industry has been booming but at the cost of the rising population. Renting a decent shop or office might actually consume more than 50% of your business startup capital leaving you in a very uncomfortable position.

All said and done, Lagos is the commercial hub of Nigeria. Who wouldn’t want to launch a business in front of 20 million+ potential customers? Starting a new SME in Lagos has more than enough prospects for expansion and fast growth but it also comes with a very high-risk ratio that can end your business before it even begins.

Personally, I’ll prefer starting a business outside Lagos where I don’t have to spend a killing in the setup process and initial customer acquisition. Then when I have stabilized a bit and started to generate recurring revenue, I can move to Lagos with full backing to face the competition and succeed.

https://basetimes.com/2020/05/14/why-starting-a-business-outside-lagos-is-more-profitable/

I'm a huge fan of thriller - crime and spy genres.

Biko, this thread shouldn't die oh.

So, I'm done with Origin by Dan Brown. It's really mind opening. If you are a religious or spiritual person, I wouldn't recommend you read this book except you want to explore knowledge beyond religion.

Next on my reading list is below....

Covid-19 Has Eerie Similarities to HIV

According to a controversial study out of India, some aspects of 2019-nCoV have “uncanny similarities” to HIV.

Full disclosure — this study’s gotten a fair degree of scrutiny. Some scientists have questioned whether it used enough data to be statistically significant, and they’ve put it through the wringer enough that, at this point, the study’s authors have withdrawn their work.

But while their work might be unproven, that doesn’t necessarily make it wrong — and there’s a little bit of evidence to back it up. HIV drugs are proving to be remarkably effective in treating the drug, and most patients are showing low white blood cell counts — something that doesn’t happen with any other form of coronavirus.

That’s creepy — because researchers in the Wuhan Institute of Virology have worked on or conducted studies combining SARS-CoV and an HIV pseudovirus in bats and humans. There’s no hard proof that the 2019-nCoV is a man-made virus — but if scientists ever find proof that it is, there’s a lot of reason to be worried.

The Communist Chinese Government Ordered Silence

Infectious disease specialist Daniel Lucey got the chance to review the documents and data China had in its possession when 2019-nCoV broke out, and he came out of it baffled. Their official story, he said, just didn’t make any sense.“China must have realized the epidemic did not originate in that Wuhan Huanan seafood market,” Lucey told the press.

Perhaps he was right. Perhaps somebody in Wuhan knew that the story didn’t add up even when they first announced it. But if they did, they were under strict orders not to say anything about it. On Jan. 2, 2020 — the day after the Huanan seafood market was blamed for the disease — the Wuhan Institute of Virology sent out a disclosure strictly “prohibiting disclosure of information” on 2019-nCoV. Some scientists have spoken up anyway. A good part of this article, for example, draws from a study by the National Natural Science Foundation of China called “The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus”.

It might not surprise you to find out that, shortly after that study was released, the communist government did its best to pull it off the internet with as much vigor as they are using in attempting to stop people referring to the virus as a “Chinese virus” or as the “Wuhan flu”

The Chinese Government Is Tightening Up Biolab Security

The biggest smoking gun of them all came straight out of the mouth of President Xi Jinping. On Feb. 14, 2020, President Xi gave a speech on the need to contain 2019-nCoV. Chinese, he said, needs to “learn our lessons… so we can strengthen our areas of weakness and close the loopholes exposed by the epidemic.

While Xi was never completely explicit about how those loopholes were to be closed, he did announce his plan to push through a new law for “biosecurity at laboratories” specifically targeting the use of biological agents that “may harm national security”.The very next day, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology followed up on Xi’s speech with a new directive entitled: “Instructions on strengthening biosecurity management in microbiology labs that handle advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus.”

There’s only one microbiology lab in all of China that handles advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus.

“We are not just battling the virus, but also conspiracy theories,” a spokesman for the Wuhan Institute of Virology has said. “Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumors, and prejudice.”

He was trying to squash an idea that has been growing in popularity ever since the 2019-nCoV Coronavirus outbreak began: that his Virology Lab, at the heart of Wuhan, might be responsible. In a way, he was right. In a time of crisis, the last thing anyone would want to do is spread fear — especially if it’s based on nothing but a baseless rumor. But when you start looking into those claims that the epidemic that’s already infected almost 250,000 people (now over 1.6 million people) across the world started in a Wuhan Virology Lab, it starts looking like something other than a conspiracy theory. It starts looking like an explanation that holds up unnervingly well — and that, if we take the time to look into it, could help prevent something similar from happening again.

Photos include the Wuhan Institute of Virology building and inside the lab

babyfaceafrica:


Stay home and eat what?.. It is easy for you the privileged ones to come online and shout stay at home... You have money in your account and stored food and supplies at home?.. What of those that have... What if those that make their living daily.. What will happen to them?.. Or you belive the audio 20k your government is sharing?.. The three cups of rice giving to each family is what they will eat àbí?... Total lockdown ain't going to work without adequate palliatives...

I'm not a privileged one trust me. And I'm totally against the lockdown especially in a country like Nigeria.

We are between the devil and the deep blue sea. Ho out and get killed by the virus. Stay home and get killed by hunger.

The situation is really bad.

babyfaceafrica:
Lockdown na scam

What I know is that the 2 weeks lockdown might be longer than planned if we are to survive this. Hunger and hardship will kill faster than the virus.

When San Francisco’s cases began to drop after two weeks without social gatherings, city officials lifted many of the bans in mid-November of 1918 — a mistake we can learn from. Citizens were still required to wear masks at performances and gatherings, but it wasn’t enough.

Like Covid-19, the Spanish Flu spread rapidly between people at public gatherings, and the city didn’t socially distance for long enough.

It wasn’t until February 1919 that San Francisco was free of the Spanish Flu.

To avoid the same pitfalls that befell the Bay Area in 1918, we have to do one thing: stay home for as long as needed.

The masks probably helped slow transmission a little, but they were often poorly made from surgical gauze. Nurses volunteered to sew them in large batches in Oakland, as you can see below, but they were thin and small.

Churches were the only gathering spaces allowed to stay open, but worshippers stood outside with face masks on, as we can see in the photo below of St. Mary’s Cathedral, taken by an unknown photographer. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that they got the same memo to stay six feet apart. Everyone at the outdoor Sunday service shown in this photo is wearing a mask, which was required by the city of San Francisco. Anyone who didn’t was a “dangerous slacker,”