It was a love for helping others that led young entrepreneur Makeda Laylor to establish her company PeoplePlus Management Solutions Limited— a support services entity that helps small businesses to start, build and grow their operations.

“I started the business out of a love for helping. I love helping and organising and I wanted to use this gift to help small and medium-sized entities [SMEs] on their development journey.

“I was working with a corporate company in 2018 when a friend asked me why I didn’t turn my passion into a business. After that conversation, I thought about it, and as they say the rest became history,” Laylor told the Jamaica Observer.

“PeoplePlus Management was funded through bootstrapping. When I started, I only had a laptop, and a friend designed a logo for me. I started with marketing and sales, and after gaining my first client, I invested in other resources,” the founder and managing director of the budding start-up further said in outlining the genesis of the company which today serves over 350 clients, most of whom are recurring customers.

Founded in April 2019, the virtually operated company provides a raft of services ranging from business registration to consultancy, coaching, virtual assistance, marketing, talent recruitment and book-keeping. Through the various business process improvement strategies, the company’s principal said her objectives are heavily focused on increasing revenues and expanding market share whilst offering quality service to the large cross-section of SMEs it services islandwide.

Having had to navigate some amount of difficulty during the early phase of the novel coronavirus outbreak in 2020, when she almost lost all of her clients, Laylor, who knows quite a bit about resilience, said it was the drive to succeed that inspired her to regroup, rebrand and restart operations. Having fully recovered and gaining new clients each day, PeoplePlus Management through its small staff complement of approximately three team members and a few consultants is now looking to become a disruptor in the business support services market.

Boasting a growing list of accomplishments, Laylor, who is a trained and certified, business coach and human resource professional, said she looks forward to many more years of success for her business after near four years of existence.

“Just seeing our growth as a company is an outstanding achievement; however, the most significant of all our accomplishments is when we journey with a business from the startup phase and watch them grow into something extraordinary and impactful—there is no better feeling,” she told Sunday Finance.

Speaking to what she believes to be the company’s competitive advantage, Laylor said it was the way in which the company adds value to the operation of its clients that has helped to make it a standout in the market.

“We are excellent because we care. We don’t just complete a service for our clients, we guide them on how to maximise and grow their businesses and we absolutely love it,” she stated.

Approved in February of this year by the Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ), under its Voucher for Technical Assistance Programme, as a Business Development Organisation— an elated Laylor is even more optimistic about the future of her company.

As part of the plans for expansion, she said the first agenda item is for the company to open its first physical office in the corporate area, in order to better serve clientèle.

“PeoplePlus shows great growth potential. Among our other plans, we want to launch a business training school that will equip entrepreneurs with the right skills and knowledge needed to scale up their businesses, and also to expand our business process outsourcing division,” she said.