August, September, and October felt like me quietly rebuilding the base again.
Not with one big announcement.
More with meetings, interviews, grocery runs, government forms, soup tips, and one hike where somebody decided burpees belonged in the bush.
After being away so much, coming back to Trinidad felt familiar, but not exactly simple. Home has a way of welcoming you and putting you straight to work at the same time.
There is comfort here, yes. But there is also traffic, errands, follow ups, people to check on, business decisions waiting for you, and the constant reminder that nothing moves unless you move it.
This season was not glamorous.
It was useful.
Meeting the Technician and Looking for Better Sales Support
One of the first things I did was meet with my technician.
I had not seen him in months. Maybe six months. Which is funny because I saw his mother and sister all the way in China before I saw him again in Trinidad.
The irony was not lost on me.
He brought along someone who was a potential salesman for YES. I have been thinking for a while that I need someone with stronger agri-field experience. Someone who can relate better to the YES customers who are farmers, agro-processors, food producers, and small manufacturers trying to build something real.
A lot of people think selling equipment is just about knowing the machine.
It is not.
You have to understand the work behind the machine.
You have to understand what the customer is trying to process, package, store, move, or fix. You have to hear what they are saying and also catch what they are not saying. Sometimes they come asking for one thing, but the real issue is layout, labour, power, workflow, maintenance, or volume.
That kind of support takes more than a price list.
So yes, I wanted someone in the agri space. Someone who could speak the language and understand the customer better.
That particular setup did not work out how I intended.
But I am still looking with eyes open.
Not desperate. Just aware.
Because as YES grows, I cannot be the only person carrying every customer conversation, every explanation, every follow up, every technical concern, and every “Miss, what you think about this machine?” message.
That is not sustainable.
And the older the business gets, the more I realise growth is not only about getting more customers. It is about building the support around the business so the business can actually hold what is coming.
Cher Mere, Massy, and Soup Advice from a Stranger
Somewhere in between all of that, I had my facial at Cher Mere.
Always a good experience.
There are some places that just feel like a small reset. You go in carrying the week on your face and leave looking a little less like life has been fighting you in private.
After that, I went to Massy to shop for soup ingredients.
A normal errand.
Or so I thought.
Somehow, I ended up getting soup tips from a chef who happened to be in the grocery at the same time.
That is the kind of Trinidad moment I enjoy.
You leave home for provisions and come back with a consultation.
Very Caribbean.
No appointment. No invoice. Just a man in the aisle casually improving your Saturday soup plan like it is community service.
And honestly, I appreciated it.
There is something nice about those random little moments. The ones you cannot schedule. The ones that remind you that life is not only big projects and serious decisions.
Sometimes life is also standing in Massy, holding vegetables, while a stranger tells you how to make the soup better.
I will take that.
SBCS and the Joy of Teaching What I Know
Then came SBCS.
I started doing guest presentations there, and the class was fantastic.
The session was around agro-processing for small business ventures and agro-entrepreneurs, which is exactly the kind of room I enjoy being in.
Not because everybody has it figured out.
Because they do not.
And that is the point.
The room had new entrepreneurs and existing entrepreneurs. People trying to upskill. People trying to understand how to build their businesses properly. People who are not just romanticising entrepreneurship, but actually trying to learn what it takes to produce, package, sell, manage, and grow.
That kind of environment energises me.
It is one thing to talk about business from a distance.
It is another thing to sit with people who are trying to figure out the next practical step.
What machine makes sense?
What process comes first?
What does scaling actually require?
What happens when you move from making a few items to producing for real customers consistently?
Those are the conversations I care about.
Because a lot of small business advice skips the messy middle.
It jumps from idea to success story and leaves out the part where people are tired, under-resourced, confused, and trying to make serious decisions with limited information.
So being in that SBCS class felt good.
It reminded me that I enjoy sharing what I know. Not as theory. As lived experience. As someone who has sold equipment, dealt with customers, watched people buy too early, buy too late, buy wrong, grow too fast, stall out, recover, and try again.
I was proud to be in the midst of that class.
Proud of the people showing up to learn.
Proud of the fact that this work is now moving into rooms where it can help people before they make expensive mistakes.
I left that experience thinking, “Yes. This needs to go on the 2026 bingo card.”
Guest appearances in universities.
Speaking. Teaching. Sharing what I know from the ground.
Let us see where that goes.
Trying Meal Prep Again, Pray for Me
Of course, in the middle of all this business rebuilding, I decided I was going to try meal prep again.
Because apparently I like to challenge myself.
Every few months, I convince myself I am about to become the kind of woman with labelled containers, balanced meals, and calm mornings.
Very organised. Very disciplined. Very “I already have lunch prepared.”
Then life watches me and laughs.
Still, I try.
Because when you are building businesses, travelling, managing people, answering customers, creating content, and trying to be a functional human being, food becomes a whole project by itself.
You either prepare or end up eating whatever is easiest, closest, or calling your name the loudest.
So yes, I tried the meal prep thing again.
Let us see how long it lasts me.
No pressure. No grand announcement.
Just me, a few containers, and hope.
The Hiring Process That Nearly Took Me Out
The biggest and most exhausting part of this season was hiring.
I posted for an admin and customer service role and got over 100 applicants.
Over 100.
That alone nearly took me out.
It was long. It was tedious. It was a lot of reading, sorting, comparing, messaging, interviewing, rethinking, and wondering why I had brought this stress upon myself.
Which, of course, I had.
For admin and customer service, I had been hesitant to hire locally again because I have had bad experiences in the past.
My last hire was through a company here in Trinidad, and I did not love the service. I did not love the level of accountability. And I really did not love the feeling that the staff was never truly mine.
That part bothered me.
When you are building a business like YES, customer support is not just answering a phone or replying to WhatsApp.
It is tone.
It is follow up.
It is product understanding.
It is knowing when to ask me a question and when to handle something directly.
It is understanding that customers here may need a different level of explanation, reassurance, and practical guidance.
I still work with contractors.
I still use international VAs.
I still believe in using different types of support for different types of work.
But I also know that YES needs a Caribbean touch.
Preferably a Trini one.
There are things you cannot always outsource cleanly.
A customer in Trinidad asking about a machine does not always speak in neat, complete product specifications. Sometimes they send a photo, a voice note, a half sentence, and expect you to understand the whole operation from that.
And sometimes you do understand, because you know the market.
You know the rhythm.
You know the way people ask questions.
You know when someone is serious, when someone is browsing, when someone is confused, and when someone needs more guidance before they spend money they may not be ready to spend.
That context matters.
So I tried again.
I did a LinkedIn post and told people I was hiring.
Then the applications came in.
And kept coming.
The process was frustrating, but it also forced me to get clearer on what I really needed.
At first, I thought I was hiring for one role.
Admin and customer service.
Simple enough, right?
Wrong.
By the time I got deeper into the process, I realised I was trying to squeeze multiple needs into one job description.
I needed someone who could handle structure, follow up, admin, and customer communication.
But I also needed someone with a different kind of strength. Someone who could support the business in another way. More detail, more steadiness, more ownership.
Eventually, I got down to the final three.
Then one person did not make the final interview, which meant they self-eliminated.
That left me with two.
Two different people.
Two different strong skill sets.
Two different reasons to hire them.
And only one position.
So I did what any rational person would do.
I hired both.
Because sometimes the issue is not that you cannot make a decision.
Sometimes the issue is that the decision in front of you is too small for what the business actually needs.
I realised I was not choosing between two people for one job.
I was looking at two different needs.
So I made it two positions.
Now we will see how it works out.
That is the honest part.
I do not know yet.
Hiring is always a risk. People can interview well and still not fit. They can have the skills but not the discipline. They can be nice but not accountable. They can want the job but not the responsibility that comes with it.
So I am hopeful, but not naive.
I still have freelancers for some tasks. I still have VAs for others. But I needed people closer to the business. People who could understand the customers, learn the rhythm, grow with the work, and not just complete floating tasks from a distance.
YES is over ten years old now.
It cannot keep operating like everything depends on me remembering, checking, fixing, explaining, and following up every time.
That is not a business.
That is me with a logo and blood pressure.
So this hiring season was frustrating, yes.
But it was also necessary.
NIB and Becoming a Proper Employer
Of course, hiring people properly meant I had to go to NIB and formally register YES as an employer.
Lawdy.
A task.
Anybody who has dealt with government paperwork knows that “just register” is never just register.
There is always a form. A line. A question. A missing thing. A system. A person telling you something that may or may not match what the next person says.
But I did it.
YES is now formally registered as an employer.
Look at growth.
Look at compliance.
Small business woman becoming proper-proper.
And while I can joke about it, that step meant something.
Because it marked a shift.
It was not just “I need help.”
It was “I am building something that has to be able to hold people properly.”
That is different.
There is a responsibility that comes when you move from working with contractors and freelancers to hiring people into the business in a more formal way.
Payroll. NIB. Expectations. Structure. Training. Accountability. Documentation.
All the unsexy things that make a business sturdier.
Nobody claps for paperwork, but paperwork is part of the base.
And this season was about the base.
Turee Falls, Fellowship Fitness, and the Burpee Ministry
By October, I also needed to get out of my head and back into my body.
So I went to Turee Falls with Fellowship Fitness, my Christian exercise group.
I thought we were going on a hike.
Apparently, the coach had other plans.
This man had us doing burpees at every stop.
Every stop.
Imagine walking through bush, climbing, sweating, trying to admire God’s creation, and here comes this man talking about burpees.
Sir.
Why are we like this?
Nature was already doing enough.
But no. We had to add suffering in sets.
And because I clearly like to participate in foolishness, I also did knees up, knees down under a waterfall.
Why?
I do not know.
Sometimes your body agrees to things before your common sense gets a vote.
But the hike was beautiful.
The greenery. The water. The jokes. The pressure. The sweat. The people. The feeling of being outside and remembering that Trinidad is not only errands, traffic, bills, and “I’ll get back to you.”
It was a proper reintroduction to home.
The alive version.
The version that makes you stop and think, “Look where we live.”
Mud, water, laughter, bush, beauty, and somebody trying to make you do another burpee.
Trini vibes.
All inclusive.
What This Season Was Really About
Looking back, August to October was not one neat story.
It was not a clean chapter with one lesson tied up nicely at the end.
It was more like real life.
I was trying to rebuild support around the business.
Trying to find the right people.
Trying to teach and speak in rooms where my experience could be useful.
Trying to eat like I have sense.
Trying to register properly as an employer.
Trying to reconnect with Trinidad without pretending Trinidad is easy.
Trying to laugh in between the frustration.
And maybe that was the point.
Some seasons are not about big launches or public wins.
Some seasons are about quietly building the base.
The meeting with the technician.
The salesman that did not work out.
The chef in Massy giving soup tips.
The SBCS class that reminded me I enjoy teaching.
The 100 plus applicants that forced me to rethink the roles.
The NIB paperwork that made the growth feel more real.
The hike that reminded me my body and my country still have things to show me.
This season was not glamorous, but it was useful.
I was finding people, testing support, registering properly, showing up in new rooms, laughing at the foolishness, and letting Trinidad remind me that rebuilding still counts, even when it looks like errands.
Sometimes growth looks like a big announcement.
And sometimes it looks like soup ingredients, government forms, two new hires, and one unnecessary burpee at a time.
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