Reality check....... Take charge of your life!

2011….. 1^st year as a full-time entrepreneur

One of the first challenges you face when you resign from a regular office job is TIME MANAGEMENT!! Not in the sense of how do I manage all these things I need to do within this short time, but rather, what do I do to fill up all this time! Hahaha. The first few days after, you are very happy sleeping in and turning off the alarm when it goes off at 5:30 with bliss! Then the orders that seemed like they were coming non-stop while you worked will slowly start dwindling and before you know it you are broke, busted and disgusted (in the words of Pastor Paul Adefarasin).

This doesn’t always have to be the case with anyone who quits a fulltime job to follow entrepreneurship. You can hit the ground running and sustain it in your case, but this wasn’t the case for me. It was as if I resigned to become a full time housewife (this is not a bad thing, its about choices really and trust me, it is not an easy job either), especially after the project with Jobmag ended. In these parts, not a lot of people understand the concept of working from home.  People will show up and expect you to have their time, “sebi you are not doing anything”, “Sade help me buy pepper and tomato and drop it off for me on your way back from Ibukun’s school, sebi you are free”. It was as though I was a lazy loafer. Besides, PHCN made things worse, no light, no internet, no deadlines, no money then the icing on the cake, I found out I was pregnant. Egbele o!

I was happy about the pregnancy, don’t get me wrong, especially because my 1^st son was already 4 and it was as if all efforts to have another were failing. I had even resigned to fate and was conditioning my mind to enjoy the fact that I had one child, after all some people don’t even have any. God must have a sense of humor you see because sometimes his timing is just funny, it’s like he’s up there watching you run helter skelter and laughing because he knows what is in store and if only you knew, you wouldn’t worry so much or maybe you would!  Oh well! The real work starts when the baby comes out, because I am usually able to bounce around still when I am pregnant. So I worked, I worked hard till the delivery day then everything came to a grinding halt. Shey if I was still working at least they will be paying me salary abi, or better still if I had a structure in place already, it wouldn’t have been that bad.

I lost a lot of my clients during this time, mainly because the business was built around me. This taught me a valuable lesson though, structures and systems are very important for business. 

Life Skills Learnt

• No matter how scarce funds are, try to have someone that shares your vision and can represent you when you are not there.
• You are not in a race, live your life and enjoy every stage, like the opportunity to care for and nurture a child.
• If you must run a home office, create a calendar of activities and stick with it, be disciplined. Soon everyone will know and accept your timing.

July 04 2013

Today was a good day generally, I think I might have found my executive assistant and I am looking forward to working with him. I also took time out to do a plan for recruitment, highlighting the categories and skills I need to run trezorlandia and the stages at which I would need them. It’s a bit sketchy now still but I have asked my friend Ibironke who’s an HR expert to look over and fine tune it for me. Ronke, this is your subtle hintJ, thanks in advance! hehe

We had this discussion in a group I am in about how we are losing values in the society because we are not taking charge of our lives and setting right priorities. Too many mothers are pursuing careers at the expense of their children and companies are not helping. I think we need a re-orientation about the role of women in the society; employers need to understand and incorporate flexible hours into their system. Employees on the other hand need to be able to speak up and not be afraid. It has become urgent.

Here’s my call, what are you doing with your life right now? Are you happy? If you are not, why are you still doing it? What are you afraid of? Have you explored all other options available? Life is too short to be living a life you hate, people! Think about this.

I read a post from a friend that I would also love you to read, it has some important points about pursuing your dream, the right attitude to adopt and most importantly knowing when to quit or retire;

bobby jones also taught me

Entrepreneur Tips

Let me share some of the useful sites I visit regularly as my tip for today

• http://www.projecteve.com/ they’re on twitter too so you can just follow them on twitter @projecteve1
• http://www.digitalinformationworld.com/ This is owned by a blogger from Pakistan, Irfan Ahmad. I stumbled on the infographic he shared about the startup entrepreneur’s mind and since then I have been hooked on his posts.
• http://nigeria.smetoolkit.org/nigeria/en This is an online repository for almost any template you need for your business, it features entrepreneur stories and updates registered users with information about seminars and programs in their countries. People always ask me, “how did you know about this free (say Free!, free is sweet especially when you are a startup) seminar” here’s how o, I am not a witch.