Success Stories (Old version)

Saida Najafova

Saida Najafova was born in 1985 in Agdash and she is single. Her higher education she got from the college on computer sciences and continued in Ukraine on Business Management. She started her career as a computer teacher. While working she was able to discover her skills to manage a business and to understand importance of her contribution to the development of her work place. Thus, she decided to start her own business. With the closest support of her brother, by benefiting from the contacts with the Baku Business LTD company and by their legal and organizational support, she opened a course center in Agdash. Although in the beginning the course was focused on providing only computer lessons, as time passed, they expanded their range of services and now there are being taught English, Russian languages, art courses, mental arithmetic, university preparation courses and etc.  Today this center services more than 150 young people in the region. As well as, the Center is famous with its university entrance probation tests.  

One day, Saida heard from the Demirbank branch manager about the Plan Your Future training that was going to take part in Goychay and decided to participate at this training. During this training she also was informed about the Start and Improve Your Business training and enrolled to the training and participated at it.

Seide mentioned that both trainings were quite useful for her and she is applying all her knowledge and skills gained during the trainings to her job.

“After the training, my knowledge was renewed and as if systemized in my brain. Before I didn’t believe that by saving small amount of money it’s possible to do something. After the Plan Your Future training, I’m saving all the changes and small amount of money separately and already in few months we observed that there is quite an amount collected. We used this saving for the marketing purposes – we ordered window-posters for our course center.

Business training taught me new approach to the business management. After the training I prepared a plan and discussed this plan, set objectives with the teachers of our center. Before the training, as a Director/manager of the Center, I used to plan my work only for the next month. Immediately after the training, I prepared plan for 3 months, and then semi-annual and annual plan. This plan is more specific, achievable and real. I already see the impact of this plan and its implementation on the development of our course. 

Also as the result of business training, we expanded our promotional / marketing activities. With our savings we prepared special window-posters. We expanded distribution of informative booklets and pay more attention to the networking initiatives. For the FY 2015, we have new marketing plan – we will organize an exhibition and knowledge contest. Already according to our plan, we will organize knowledge contest in February and in May, we will conduct education exhibition in Heydar Aliyev Center. This initiative will not only serve to our marketing purposes, but also will help us to demonstrate our social responsibility commitment – to increase interest of regional youth to the education and encourage them to be more educated. We also expanded our internet and social network – facebook marketing and already see positive impact of this”.

Saida also informed that she regularly shares her knowledge and skills gaind during the trainings with the course students and teachers. She considers that there is deep need and demand for conducting this training to the youth groups in the region and that this training will have a big impact on helping youth to start their businesses.  

Latifa khanum

45 years old Latifa khanum has got secondary school education. Married and has 3 sons. They’re students. The reason of building her own businees were the family difficulties, difficulties in taking care of her little children and low income of her husband which is completly didn’t cover even their important expenses.

She didn’t have money for beginning her businnes ,and she says that  all success of starting an unleavend business is bravery and proficiency. In the beginning when she hasn’t got enough money she obtained money from dairy products which she was taking them from producer, then she sold them and gave it to producer. Finaly she grew her small business and now  she has got a fairly wide range of trade- she opened a shop in the courtyard of her house and selling diary products, as well as foods and vegetables. Also they renovated their house, bought a new car and invested in her sons education.

Participation at “Start and improve your own business”  training was the new stage of developing my own businnes, Latifa said:

 Fisrt impression was very difficult for me  because of new financial termins, lots of books, exercises – I thought it’s not for me and couldn’t manage it all. But at the end of training I changed my mind , it was for me and will be very helpul with starting&improving my own business. Training was very easy because of the trainers easy explanation way.

The main benefit from the training was newly learned skills: especially marketing, advertising, how to calculate prime cost, the calculation of the annual procurement and sales plan, also calculation of obsolescence was very interesting and useful for me. Business game also tought me lots of things which I’ve never heard about it. Now I use that business game in my own business life and it has many advantages.

Latifa khanum said that she started improving marketing and customer services. After training she also opened new shop and started selling women clothes. Now  she fully esatblished a new selling system with choosing the range of goods in accordance with the wishes of customers, with taking their photos and sending it to customers. Also she started new business which she has no experiences – now she’s ordering cake with photo to baker and selling them in her own grocery shop.

Now I’m selling all my goods. I think if I’ve had this training 2-3 years before now my business would be better. It would be great to have more such training programs.

Nahayat Abbasova

28-years old Nahayat Abbasova was born in Shamkir. Their family consists of four and she has elder brother. Her father lives and works in Russia since she was small. Her brother also left for Russia to work after returning from army.  Staying at their home alone with her mother, they managed their household and there are few months that Nahayat also married.

After getting her higher education in Baku Slavic University, she wanted to stay and work there, but her family didn’t allow her, so she came back to Shamkir and started to work as a teacher at the school. However limited opportunities in the region make her feel oppressed and she actively takes part at seminars, trainings and social events that took part. While attending leadership trainings, she also gets aware about the Start and Improve Your Business training and enrolls to this training. By attending in these trainings, she increases her capacity and gets more motivated. 

On the top of all, she learned from the training how to sufficiently manage her monthly income, developing business plan and thus, she was able to analyze her and her family’s capacity and opportunities from another perspective and define her business idea – as notes Nahayat. She also states that together with her family they discussed several ideas and decided on one of them – now they plan to open a Beauty and Healthcare (SPA) Centre and they will realize this without accessing loan and using their own family savings on initial stages. Nahayat already received consent from her family for moral and financial support in order to take over this initiative.

Thanks to her active community representation she was elected to the local municipality and now she is taking an active part in creating income generating households and businesses of the municipality. Their municipality has very limited income sources. Currently Nahayat, applying her knowledge gained at the training on creating business plan, she contributes to conducting market research, building marketing plan, making procurements, income and expenses plan and in general working out a business plan for establishing poultry household for the municipality. With this additional income source their municipality will be able to provide more social services to the community and even, Nahayat mentioned that, in near future with the income from this small business they plan to establish a shelter for the women that suffered from household violence in their region. She also suggested a new business idea for the municipality – organizing sale of handworks of their community women and currently this idea is being discussed within their municipality.

Nahayat mentions that without this training she would hardly be able to contribute to these activities of municipality. Always being highly motivated and encouraged, this lady also encourages other women in her community to start their own businesses.