Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in business development but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Fola Alabi, Owner of Strategic Project Leader, Inc., located in Calgary, AB, Canada.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

I am in the business of transforming businesses and lives. As a business and transformational leadership expert for high performance and sustainable change, I help corporations, driven professionals, and entrepreneurs create and execute strategies that give them a competitive advantage, create tangible outcomes and achieve goals in business and beyond with ease.

As a certified project, Agile, and change management practitioner, and an MBA holder in strategy and project management, I leverage my superpowers in project management with a strategic focus to provide consulting service, keynote speaking, training, and coaching to my clients.

My clients are organizations or corporations, driven professionals, and entrepreneurs who want sustainable change and to achieve desired strategic goals in business and beyond.

Tell us about yourself

I am a global keynote speaker, author, educator and catalyst for high performance and sustainable change the world needs today.

I am the founder of Strategic Project Leader Inc. a business consulting firm, and the CEO of No-Gap foundation, a for-purpose non-profit organization helping bridge the opportunity gap for women, visible minorities and working parents. A busy mum of 3 who has worked across 3 continents and enjoys cooking, volunteering, and podcasting, helping empower and create leaders.

My journey started on a quest to solve my own challenges in my career and relationship without knowing that I already had the solution in me. I am a project management practitioner by training and experience, a change advocate by design and a transformational leader by providence.

Being a business leader helping organizations deliver multi-million-dollar projects, I never knew I could leverage those skills until I hit rock bottom. I realized that I needed a mindset reset.  This gave me a new perspective. I started leveraging my wealth of experience in project management from the past 15 years in my day-to-day life and business, it changed everything!

Today, I teach others how to leverage project management with a strategic focus to transform their business, career, and life.

In my soon-to-be-released book: "Project Intelligence" – "The practical steps to achieving goals," Fola shares insights on how to increase project IQ, a critical quotient every leader, professional and entrepreneur needs to create the needed competitive advantage in today's volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world.

Leveraging Strategic Project Management gave me my life back and it is my life's mission to transform a million lives by 2030. I plan to do this by transforming organizations, driven professionals and entrepreneurs into value engines that achieve strategic goals in business and beyond while creating the life and results they crave.

Without a doubt, Strategic Project Management is the #1 top business and life skill that will help you become a high performer and “execute right - the right projects the right way to achieve goals and have predictable outcomes.

I share strategic project management strategies to help driven professional, entrepreneurs, and organizations get results and achieve their goals in business and life on my podcast –“ Strategic Project Leader (SPL) Podcast - From Project manager to CEO.” Join me live on Saturdays on LinkedIn and YouTube. To learn more, visit my website and follow me on LinkedIn, so you do not miss out on any of my valuable content and get notified on the next topic and special guest on the SPL podcast.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

Helping ordinary people like me live extraordinary lives and create extraordinary results with ease. I remember a client telling me, "you have given me the tools, strategies, and motivation to dream again and achieve goals that I felt were impossible. You make me remember that the word impossible actually reads: I'm possible!"

What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?

Learning how to prioritize the most important and valuable activities that will give you the greatest results. The 20% of activities within your plan will produce 80% of the result - The Pareto principle.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

  1. Make sure you validate your business idea to ensure there is a need out there.
  2. Understand your Most Ideal client (MIC). Your MICs are those that will need and pay for your products and/or services as it meets their need.
  3. Think about your Unique Value Add ( UVA) and why you are different from others providing the same or similar products and/or services.
  4. Make sure your business idea is one that you are passionate about, and it connects to your "WHY"! This makes it easier when times get tough, as they will; however, don't give up when things are rough. Entrepreneurship can be lonely at the start!
  5. Get a good support system and accountability partner that will keep cheering you up and help you stay on track to achieving your business goals.

Is there anything else you'd like to share?

Do not give up on your goals. Change is closer than you think. It is actually one project away.

Fun Fact: Life is a project, don't get too hung up. To get the results you crave, you need to build your project management muscle by leveraging "project intelligence - (PQ)" to manage life's challenges, changes, and goals in business and beyond as projects.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://folaalabi.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FolaFAlabi/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/FolaFAlabi/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/FolaFAlabi
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/FolaFAlabi/

Podcast: https://splpodcast.com/
Consulting: https://strategicprojectleader.com/
Non-Profit: https://nogapfoundation.com/

Thought Leadership:
https://www.thepmoleader.com/fola-alabi
https://projectintelligence.ca/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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