Diego_Antunez
Diego Antunez
My Business Training
Yahaya M Sabo
About Yahaya M Sabo
Yahaya M. Sabo, known affectionately as Baba Yahaya, is a skilled and passionate plumbing technician from Bauchi, Nigeria. With over a decade of experience, he has refined his craft and built a reputation for professionalism and quality service.
Yahaya dreams of opening B. Yahya Plumbing Solutions, a fully equipped shop offering both plumbing products and services tailored to the needs of his community.
His vision goes beyond business success. He hopes to use his platform to foster community development and empower local youth by sharing his skills and creating sustainable opportunities for future generations.
Yahaya M Sabo
Business Goals
Honesty, professionalism, and service are the core values that guide Yahaya’s business. He wants customers to trust his skill and character, confident they are in capable hands. His shop will tell the story of his journey, emphasizing community support, hard work, and ongoing self-improvement.
B. Yahya Plumbing Solutions will offer a wide range of plumbing materials like pipes, fittings, valves, and tools, alongside services such as leak repairs and water heater installations.
Yahaya plans to add an online platform for ordering services and products to meet both traditional and modern customer needs conveniently.
Yahaya M Sabo
Obstacles
With thirteen years of experience, Yahaya began learning plumbing in 2012 under a relative’s mentorship. Starting as an assistant, he gradually took on entire projects and gained expertise in installation, repairs, and water system maintenance.
His deep knowledge, strong work ethic, and professionalism make him highly dependable. Yahaya keeps detailed records and carefully manages finances. However, he faces major obstacles, including lack of startup capital, no physical shop, and family financial responsibilities.
Despite his experience and determination, caregiving duties stretch his income thin, preventing him from acquiring a workspace and essential materials to launch his business.
Yahaya M Sabo
Our Partnership
Yahaya is seeking support from Leadership Initiatives through mentorship, funding, business development guidance, and assistance in launching his online platform. With the right backing, he believes his business can evolve from a vision into a valuable resource for both customers and the wider community.
Yahaya’s goals extend beyond financial success, as he wants B. Yahya Plumbing Solutions to become a trusted, well-known business that trains youth, creates employment, and provides accessible professional plumbing services throughout Bauchi.
Additionally, he hopes to better care for his father, get married, and build a stable, loving home for his family.
My Grant Proposal Presentation
As part of the International Leadership and Business Internship, I collaborated with top development experts to help grow and strengthen my business partner’s brand.
At the end of the program, my team presented our final proposal to a panel of judges from the Leadership Initiatives Grant Committee. This formal pitch allowed us to apply our entrepreneurial skills, showcase our strategic plan, and advocate for meaningful change in our partner’s business.
Our team was awarded a grant that will fund the implementation of our business partner’s plan, providing life-changing support that will expand operations, improve financial stability, and create new growth opportunities. Over the next year, this grant will help transform the future of their business and improve the quality of life for both the entrepreneur and their community.
My Grant Proposal
Throughout the program, we worked closely with Yahaya M Sabo to gain a clear understanding of their business goals. Though Yahayahas leveraged their skills and years of experience to create their business, they face obstacles hindering the expansion of their work.
Guided by their vision, we crafted a proposal detailing the marketing materials that would support the growth of their business. We devised a plan that would allow Yahaya to optimize their business through a new branding strategy.
Investments in a logo and marketing materials, such as signs and flyers, are also vital for establishing a strong brand identity and expanding the customer base. These visual assets help create a consistent and memorable image that builds trust and recognition among potential clients.
Internship Highlights
Our business development journey began with a one-on-one Zoom meeting with our partner, Yahaya M Sabo, and our Nigerian project coordinator. This initial conversation laid the foundation for strong collaboration and helped us better understand Yahaya’s background, family, goals for the business, and the specific challenges they were facing.
Hearing directly from Yahaya gave us the insight we needed to begin brainstorming practical, personalized solutions. Each morning, our team held focused discussions to refine our ideas, reflect on expert advice from the day before, and adjust our timeline to move our plans forward efficiently.
Throughout the process, on-staff project coordinators and business development experts guided us, helping us ask the right questions and turn our ideas into meaningful, actionable strategies.
I had the unique opportunity to visit the Polish Embassy, where I gained insight into the role of diplomacy in fostering strong relationships between Poland and the United States.
The embassy functions as a center for international collaboration, working with partner countries and global organizations to address pressing issues such as poverty, gender inequality, and climate change. Through this visit, I learned how diplomats engage in meaningful dialogue and policy development to create sustainable, people-focused solutions.
Officials from the Polish Embassy shared how they partner with local communities to identify needs and implement programs that empower individuals and strengthen long-term development. This commitment to community-driven impact inspired my team and me as we worked to develop our own business proposal focused on creating lasting change.
Throughout the internship, our team had the incredible opportunity to collaborate with top experts in business and economic development from Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. State Department, and the U.S. Department of Commerce.
One of the highlights was a session with Gerald Gangaram, a decorated Apache helicopter pilot & leadership expert. He gave us a crash course in leadership and decision making, breaking down the key elements of what makes an effective leader. His insights helped us think bigger and more strategically about how to position our partner’s business for success.
With support from Mr. Gangaram and other global leaders, we sharpened our ideas, refined our strategy, and built a powerful pitch deck to present at the end of the week.
To further enhance our presentation and proposal, our team had the unique opportunity to partner with a business and development mentor with immense experience in the fields of finance, development, business management, and more.
With support from our mentor, we were able to craft key questions for our business partners that enabled us to design an effective SWOT analysis that guided our work throughout the week. Following the completion of the SWOT analysis, our mentor worked alongside us to hone our ideas and proposal recommendations that would provide funding and new marketing materials for our partner.
At the end of the week, our mentor supported our slide deck design and gave us instrumental feedback as we practiced pitching our ideas and proposals. This feedback directly contributed to our receiving support from the Leadership Initiatives’ Board of Directors and Guest Judges to implement our microgrant and marketing designs.