Women in Business Feature Dunisa Joyce: Secrets to Becoming Established in the Online Market

Deborah's Muse sat with Dunisa Joyce who is co-founder to Joyce's Online Shopping and Courier Service. She humbly explanined that Glen Joyce, her husband, is the vissionary behind their business. Read in depth, as she shared her sercrets to becoming established in the Online Market.

Deborah's Muse What type of business do you have? 

Dunisa: The business that we currently have is an online shopping and courier service. Online in the sense that if you need any particular item that is not available in Guyana we can source it for you and have it available at your door front. Anything from a feather to a car. Courier service - we provide you with a mailing address snd you can ship to the mailing address, then you are informed when 

Deborah's Muse: What's the name of your business?

Dunisa: The name of the business is Joyce’s Online shopping and Courier service. Our tag line or motto: making online shopping a walk in the park. Just tell us what u need and we will do the rest for you. 

Deborah's Muse: Describe your early childhood and how it influenced your path in business? 

Dunisa: During my childhood, I was always surrounded by women entrepreneurs. From my grandmother to my mother, these women in my life were always selling something. I grew up on a farm where my grandparents sold Poultry, fruits, and vegetables, and I was a part of it all. After primary school, I sold vegetables in the neighborhood. I was shy and embarrassed at first and eventually, I began to love it. I realized that the business arena held my passions. My mom opened a small grocery shop, a stall in the Georgetown arcade. After school, weekends and holidays, I was tasked to assist with either the arcade or the shop. I was in charge, and I loved satisfying customers, making them happy, and encouraging them to come again. I followed the example of two generational influences before me, my mother and my grandmother to become a "Woman in Business.' My mother is still into business even though she is retired. It’s in my blood and in my DNA. My diploma is in marketing gives me great insight on how to marketing my business to make forthwith (your first thought) in minds of the clientele. I also hold a degree in Business Management, this knowledge is used to manage and move the business to a different level.  

Deborah's Muse: How did you get started in the online industry? 

Dunisa:

My husband actually realized that persons needed items that are not easily available in Guyana or are very costly. The online businesses in Guyana are very expensive so he decided to penetrate the market and offer the same online experience but with excellent customer service and of course better service rate.

Deborah's Muse: What prompted you to venture into the online arena? 

Dunisa:  The Online industry was actually started by my husband as he is the founder. And together we built our brand to where it is today.

Deborah's Muse: At what point in your process did you discover that you wanted to be an entrepreneur? 

Dunisa: Wanting to be an entrepreneur has always been in my dreams since I was selling pointer brooms and ground provision as a little primary school girl.

Deborah's Muse: Did you have the resources to get started?

 Dunisa: Yes and no, but with help of persons we were able to venture into the business.

Deborah's Muse: Was there ever a moment where you did not feel supported? 

Dunisa: No; Never. We received the support of families, friends, church members, and even strangers. 

Deborah's Muse: Have you experienced any failures in business?

Dunisa: I wouldn’t term it a failure, but it’s a setback because presently we do not have an office space to offer the full experience to customers.

Deborah's Muse: Do you still hold a corporate profession.

Dunisa: Yes, I still hold a corporate profession. I am currently a coordinate at Massy Services Guyana limited (She has held this position for 10 years while building her brand).

Deborah's Muse: Some women's sole income is from the business they have started while you on-the-other-hand work a full-time job. Explain if corporate is where you seek to stay or will eventually break out to become solely devoted to your business?

Dunisa: It is my heart’s desire to venture into the business and be solely devoted to it. In that regard, I can fully put more effort and time into it and develop more branches across Guyana and offer job opportunities to my fellow Guyanese. 

Deborah's Muse: How do you create balance amidst the various shoes you have to fill? 

Dunisa:  Very good question! One of my favorite verses is Phillippians 4:13  I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me. I balance business mostly on my lunch breaks, nights after work, and weekends. 

Deborah's Muse: Do you think ambition is an attitude or a mindset? 

Dunisa: In my humble and professional opinion, I strongly believe that ambition is a mindset. It’s a desire or determination to achieve the success of any kind. 

 

Deborah's Muse: Would you say you procrastinate when it comes to your business?

Dunisa: Yes, something I do procrastinate, but we know what it says that procrastination is a killer of time. So once time permits me I do what needs to be done. Because time and opportunity lost can never be regained. 

Deborah's Muse: Looking at yourself introspectively, how would you describe the woman in business who is prone to be successful? 

Dunisa: Firstly, you need to set a goal that you want to achieve. Mentally it can be strenuous due to other obligations. Regardless of our mental and emotional situations, determination is a recipe for success. Moreover, letting God take charge will definitely cause us to become successful. When you stay God-focused and Goal-focused you will enjoy success.

Deborah's Muse: How different is owning an online business versus a physical storefront?

Dunisa: A storefront offers a personalized experience with readily available assistance, but the same can be offered over the phone. 

We don’t have a physical store at the moment. We are working feverishly to acquire a store where we can continue to build a repertoire with our customers. Hence customers will have the experience of sitting and browsing from the comfort of our store and shop items that are readily available. 

Deborah's Muse: How can customers contact you?

Dunisa: Customers can contact us via our WhatsApp numbers 6010228 and 6803972 or our Facebook and Instagram page at Joyce’s Online Shopping.

Deborah' Muse: Work at building your dream. The ways in which we do so is through focus, diligence and discipline. Remember, Ecclessiates11:6 states, "Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let your hands not be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well."

 Thank you to the Management and Staff of Joyce's Online Shopping and  Courier Services

Make Room

In the winter of 2020, my daughter was given a science project to germinate seeds in wet cotton balls. The seeds were placed in a ziplock bag and pasted to a window. After germination it was planted in soil, giving it the necessary nutrients, water, sunlight, and all the necessary things a plant needed to grow and mature.

The Encroaching of Roots

However, we soon realized that the planters and the pots which we initially used did not accommodate the continued growth of the pants. The sunflowers and the marigolds did not have sufficient space to allow for the maturing. As a result, some of the sunflowers were choked and died because of the limited space, some received too much water that caused its stem to absorb it and died, and there were the ones that were too fragile due to limited space causing maturation of the stems, hence they too broke and died.

This scenario causes us to examine the laws of nature and how the principle of allowing yourself the space to mature and grow is vital to one sustenance, longevity, and maturity.

The sunflowers placed in the pot with limited spacing affected its growth. Moreover, it is the same with people, some places and people you are planted around will encroach upon you and curtail your growth.

 

Plantla

 Environments can become toxic as a result of people and what they poured into us. The vicissitudes of life can create weak cores in us, and false misconceptions about what you lend to stunted growth. Sometimes too much of a good thing can leave you with the inability to function. The Law of nature teaches sustenance is due to equilibrium (balance). 

Where the is no balance maturity is stifled

 Now, you are unable to breathe and make decisions that will cause you to become resilient, persistent, and even formidable. 

 You reflect on your life and it seems like you're stuck in a place where all you are surrounded by weak saplings, no room to breathe or extend your roots. Growing stronger cores or stems requires sobriety to access your environs, the ability to be selective of conditions that suit growth, and being resilient during the transition. Understand, just as a plant needs room to mature, grow, and extend its roots,  so does a human.

Take all the room in the Word, that your roots may grow deep in God, and let your shoot extend to the highest heavens embracing the brilliance of the Son. All that matters now is that God loves us with an everlasting love that causes it to penetrate the deep recesses of our hearts. The fruits you able to bear are dependent upon the conditions in which you are planted.

Release yourself into the everlasting arms of God who has given us the precious gift of his Holy Spirit that causes us to be sustained in any condition. Continue to go forward as the Holy Spirit is your guiding light to illuminated the darkness of the soils of life. We can face our fears, we can face the darkness, we can face the evils, we can face anything because all things are made possible through Christ Jesus who gives us strength. So we make room to grow we make room for our roots to deepen in Christ's past transition zones. 

Make room for your roots so that you may elevate and mature fully.

Photo: Credit: Nature-and-Garden

The Beauty in the Process

That which is placed into your hands requires action. It is only when you work in faith believing, can beauty burst forth. 

The most beautiful of petals fall from a plant and withers, dries up, and eventually decays, not by being exposed to any forms of the elements (wind, water, etc.) but because of something called process.

Each person has been created to endure the process of life with the help of the Holy Spirit. In each of our lives, we have to be processed. And in the processing; just like eagles that lose their talons and have to grow them back, it is the same with humans. Your endurance and longevity are dependent on your ability to be processed. 

In your process ye will shed people,  things, you will shed desires, will, you will shed places, mindsets, beliefs in order for the beauty that God placed inside of you can come forth. In the shedding beauty still remains because it is never what's offered on the outside that makes you beautiful unless you're all about the superficial. 

If you should ever have the opportunity to observe any plant in nature; it is only when the left, flower, stem, fruit separates from the plant that it is ever able to sustain itself. 

I quote John 15:5, "“Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. 6Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned." 

Kingdom Rejected

 There is an old adage, "as you make so you must lie on it." The children of Israel made their bed by rejecting the Lord who brought them out of Eygpt, defended them, went out before them, and afforded them a wealth of possession.

We have seen over time how the power of choice causes the demise of the masses. Made a little lower than the angels; you were given the power to choose. However, choices made in rebellion offer the guarantee of consequences.

We see an example of this in 1 Samuel 8, where the children of Israel chose government over the Kingdom, opening breathing grounds for totalitarianism. The bottom line is that the children of Israel were blind to the error of their way. They did not understand that again they were rejecting God and not just a man. The manifest power that resided in Samuel was by the Spirit of God and the children of Israel had countless encounters and memory stones about the power of their God.

Consider the potential demise that could be experienced when you reject the voice of the one who sent to guide you on the path of right-living, to preserve your life. 

And the Lord said to Samuel, Hearken to the voice of the people in all they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not be King over them. 1 Samuel 8:7

Rejecting the Lordship of their Sovereign God and his might to save them brought on calamity. Be careful that the things you focus your heart upon inevitably take reign in your life.

God will always send a warning before destruction and again you are offered the opportunity to choose your fate. Desiring what others have should not be determined by perception. The end results, sons and mandated to be enlisted in the army (army officers and commanders of armies), women will go to work as a result of the men being sent away, enslaved, taxed, wealth and possessions misplaced.

Imagine seeking security in a mortal being, earthly gods, carved by human hands and earthly understanding and the irrefutable confidence that he can offer security and protection. Moreover, the price for rejecting God comes with recompense. God will entreat you with your desires but know His judgments will be in close pursuit of his righteousness.