My challenge as an entrepreneur (33) – Fola Daniel Adelesi

While going through challenges you will always admit that the challenges are worth the stress if you sit down to take stock of the lessons you have learnt and more importantly, the people you have met.

I have a picture in my office that was taken along with Senator (Dr.) Jubril Martins Kuye, Professor Afolabi Soyode and Prince Bola Ajibola, a member of the international court of justice and founder of Crescent University. I have another one taken with Professor Odutola Osilesi and with Mr. Chika Nwaozuzu, former Special Adviser to Swedish Ambassador. One question that people keep asking me is, ‘how did you meet these people?’

My answer is that challenges took me to the people who have their contacts and I met them but always have it in mind that I was ready to face those challenges so I can say that I would not have met some of them at all if I had given in to challenges. Your vision will require that you meet some people but the truth is that it will not be the size of the vision that will bring them your way. Your refusal to give in to challenges while trying to accomplish what you set out to do is what will open the doors of these people.

Let it be known to you that big visions do not open the doors of men who once had very big visions. You need guts and you must have been tested with odds because they know that every Tom, Dick and Harry can have a big vision.

Meeting with Joe C. David, author of ‘Be Your Own Boss,’ and some other books was also as a result of challenges and this happened on 27th of May 2008. 23rd of May was my birthday so I wanted to celebrate it by giving out to people some of the things I had learnt. I later taught about fixing a meeting for 27th of May which was children’s day. The hall I wanted to use was booked so I had to change my date to 29th which was Democracy day in Nigeria. I was going to teach on Writing Business Proposal and I had billed the participants. I wanted some of the proceeds of the meeting to go to an orphanage.

When I got to the venue of the meeting some people were using the hall so I had to wait for them to pack before I start setting up. As soon as they finished I started setting up for our meeting. Some of the people I had expected were not in the meeting yet so I did a lot myself. Joe C. David, the organizer of the meeting that was going on before I came in was seated in a corner and was watching. He later called me to ask a few questions. I remember he said that what I charged was too small for that kind of a meeting I was organizing. He simply was saying that I was giving out so much for so little. I had prepared for about sixty people but only about ten people showed up. Some out of the ten were also crew members and we did not start the meeting as scheduled because I could not talk to empty hall. By the time we finished the meeting the owners of the hall were waiting to collect extra money for the extra time so all the money collected that day from the few participants was used to pay for extra time. My consolation for that day was in meeting Joe C. David and through his meeting I have met so many other relevant people.

My challenge as an entrepreneur (32) – Fola Daniel Adelesi

How I met Dr. (Mrs.) Nkiru Danjuma was also an interesting experience for me and after meeting her I said to myself that the price paid was worth it. During the 2007 edition of Nigeria International Model United Nations’ Conference held at the International Conference Centre, Abuja, I met a young man from Covenant University who introduced himself as Toni Nathaniel.

This young man happens to be an interesting fellow as well and those who have met him will agree because he has some blunt views with some issues and maybe like some of us, he is a workaholic on the computer. I am also guilty of that crime. One of the things that attracted the two of us was the way I spoke during the conference and some of the views I shared. On his part I think it was the fact that he was the leader of the delegation from Covenant University and he did a great job with the performances of the university.

Just before the conference was concluded the atmosphere was getting tensed because of people who had suddenly become friends under a week and were already dreading missing one another. As for Toni and I, we only taught about impacting others so he promised to invite me to speak in a meeting. In January of 2008 I got his invitation to address a group of Engineering students who were proceeding on industrial attachement for six months. The meeting was to hold in the library of Covenant University and he had invited Bose Dipeolu (my co-delegate from Olabisi Onabanjo University), Sola Wilton Waddell (our fellow ambassador from Lagos State University), Johnson Abally who is into human resource and Dr. (Mrs.) Nkiru Danjuma who at the time had been invited by Bihsop David Oyedepo along with some other people to sit in the board overseeing Covenant University.

A few days to the meeting which was to stretch over the first weekend in February, I was still thinking about how to get money. I was going to be there for days and would have to feed myself and coming back home was going to be another issue. I had a choice. It was my personal assistant in Edible Pen at that time, Jumoke Okelola, that gave me a loan to be able to make that meeting. Sometimes during challenges when I need to collect money, I always see beyond the money because I have never seen myself in a future where I was collecting loans from everywhere. I have only seen myself in a future where I am giving out money. And don’t forget that I already had products that could sell and cover for what I had collected. I went to the meeting with some of my CDs so that I would sell and return the loan that had taken me there.

Dr. Danjuma was the first to speak during the meeting and she was fantastic. She spoke, first with the touch of a mother and then with the aura of feminity crowned by her proficiency in the legal profession. She caught my attention when she mentioned her affiliation with Chief Kehinde Sofola because I am from the same town with Sofola. When I finished my speech she stood and was waiting for me to return to the platform after which she shook my hands and said, ‘that was well said.’ She gave the speakers an open invitation to talk to her later that night at the Guest House in the University.

She practically became more interesting in every minute we, the speakers and a few others, spent with her. That was where she told us the story about scaling through cancer. Dr. Danjuma is very healthy and active and she works several hours. I do not know of too many women working like she does but you will not imagine that cancer nearly killed.

I took her as a mother and I have benefited immensely from her vast experience as a lawyer. I talk to her before taking some vital decisions and sometimes I just slow down after talking to her.

Money could have hindered a great relationship like this but remember that I borrowed money to be in the meeting where I met her. She is one of my several mums and with everyone has come a challenge. Now I now that challenges bring people your way if you do not succumb to those challenges. I could have missed out!

My challenge as an entrepreneur (31) – Fola Daniel Adelesi

Meeting people is one important thing that will help your business and I am sure you already know that by now. What I am not sure you know about is the fact that some of the challenges you are facing are supposed to bring you towards some of the people that you need. There are some challenges that will get you closer to some people and there some challenges that are meant to get you away from some of the people you really need. You have to be discerning and know when to keep going on and when not to.

I have met a few people who are now very good friends and some are like very good mothers or brotherly figures in my life but I would not have met some of these people if I decided to sit at home and not take up challenges. Your refusal to take challenges will stop you from meeting some of the people you need to meet.

One day a young man walked up to me and simply said, ‘you are Fola Daniel.’ I wondered how he got to know because I know that he knows my name but does not know me in person. He told me it was just intuition. He said he was able to match my name with some of the things he already heard about me when he saw me. This young man I am talking about is Joshua Ajayi, publisher of ‘The Communicator.’ He told me about a meeting that was supposed to be holding at the Muson Centre, Onikan, Lagos. I had every reason not to go for the meeting because I did not have enough cash. By now getting the cash needed to go for a meeting at all cost was not a new thing for me so I got the required cash and went for the meeting. While waiting in line to get into the hall, I overheard a young lady with an American accent who was making a phone call.

At a time the organizers of the programme were not attending to the people waiting to get into the hall so those of us outside got talking and I met this young lady who turned out to be a Nigerian who had lived nearly all her life in America. She was taken there as an infant. A few minutes later be had become very good friends and were walking together all over the place. What interested me was that she had just returned to the country and she was not looking for a job. She started her company called EPO designs. EPO was from her name (Elizabeth Pelumi Olubiyi). One of the concepts of her company is to specifically work on logos. We walked into an exhibition hall and she asked me to talk about some logos. She would ask me to forget the names and tell her what I think the logos represent without the name. if the logos and the names don’t match then we would walk up to the guys exhibiting that their company needed to change their logo. It was not just about branding because I am into branding. It was about talking without too many words.

Later in the afternoon Elizabeth invited me for a show in the City Mall, opposite the Muson Centre. If she hadn’t gone there I would never have gone there that day. Her invitation to me opened up some things in my business. As I entered the City Mall all I could see was opportunities. A bookstore in City Mall now sells my books and CDs, I have been a part of a TV recording severally and I have gotten some great books from there just because I met Elizabeth that I may not have met if I sat at home because of money constraints. Daring your challenges will bring some right people your way!

My challenge as an entrepreneur (30) – Fola Daniel Adelesi

Placing priority over perfection rather than starting something is one great challenge that critics will make you face and if you listen to them well enough you will soon pack up because you will forget that it is important to start in a crude manner instead of waiting till it can be done perfectly.

I studied Mass Communication in the university and I majored in Public Relations in the last two years of study. While searching the internet one day about the history of telephones I realized that the telephone was an accident. Read what I found out :

Bell had built an experimental telegraph, which began to function strangely one day because a part had come loose. The accident gave Bell insight into how voices could be reproduced at a distance, and he constructed a transmitter and a receiver…

If you read that paragraph clearly then you would see that even the telegraph that they had built was an experimental telegraph. If they had not built and experimental telegraph they would not have invented the telephone that you and I enjoy today.

One evening I was trying to sell copies of CDs to a group of friends but there was a new person among them who did not know me before that day. He collected the CDs and all he could do was complain about some things that needed to be done. He complained about the graphics that even a blind man can feel and say this is excellent for a start. When I examined him I realized that he was not even doing anything in business line so lashed him intelligently and walked away. Please not that I did not abuse. All the friends at that time were students of law. I had been told initially that when a lawyer knows he cannot win a case he sometimes resorts to adding some nuisance value to the issue to confuse every other person. When I said that to him his fellow law students pitied him.

Some other people pick up my first and second books but they don’t see anything positive. All they see is what is not right about what you have done. I look at them and wonder what planet they came from. Unfortunately those who will condemn your works the most are those who have not attempted anything huge enough to be called a task. Some of them have not succeeded at half of what you have done. When you make bold to ask them questions about what they are doing you will realize that they are the kind of people who will tell you they are waiting for the right time or the perfect time. Some of them claim to be waiting for enough resources but they will heckle those who have done something.

Let me boldly say that it is mediocrity or the fear of failure that makes some people do nothing and still claim to be waiting for the right time. What I advocate is to start what you have to in whatever way you can but keep improving on what you do. Sam Adeyemi is a speaker that I revere and he has a taste for quality in book production. One day when I visited a friend of mine who was student chaplain in Covenant University, Shade Oduekun, one out of a set of triplets who sister, Fehintola Oduekun was Senior Prefect girl when I was Senior Prefect boy in Mayflower School, I was shocked to see one of the first prints of Sam Adeyemi’s books. It was a copy of “The Parable of Dollars.” I simply could not match the packaging of that book with the Sam Adeyemi I now know. He started from somewhere and kept improving.

Ibukun Awosika, the CEO of the Chair centre, will tell you to start anyhow! She said she started her office from an uncompleted building and her instruments were those of the carpenters whose services she asked for. I have not said you should not do things well but make sure you start and keep improving. The automobiles should be a good example for us all. Many of us cannot imagine that the cars we admired 30 years ago are the same cars we ridicule today. Go on the internet and see the first models of automobiles. Start anyhow, keep improving but don’t pack up because of perfectionists. Some of them will not buy your products even if you improve on them so develop hypertension because of some jobless people?

My challenge as an entrepreneur (29) – Fola Daniel Adelesi

There are two business rules you must not violate. The first is to put your passion before your profession and the second is to professionalize your passion. Simply put, these two rules can be rephrased to mean that you must only build a business around your passion and take your passion as a serious business. And understanding of this rule helped me in some of my challenges.

Keeping streams of income because of cash flow is one of the issues a lot of business people will get involved with but unfortunately a lot of business people will lose their focus because they want to keep their cash flow by increasing streams of income. Don’t let me go too far with words and forget the real issues. When some business people see that the sales of a product is skyrocketing, they drop whatever they initially chose to sell and they go for the new product with skyrocketing sales. At the end of the day too many people who should not be in a field get into the field and make that business reach its peak faster than it should. According to the law of diminishing returns, that business then begins to go down sooner than expected. At this time all the people who have rushed into it begin to rush out of it.

Sometimes this happens because so many business people do not have a plan of action. They simply want to go into business and the truth is that some of the people who want to go into business do not really know what they want to sell. They only want to sell whatever is selling. They don’t have anything they have sat down to think about so that they can present it to the market in a unique manner.

When sachet water business started in Nigeria one could easily begin to imagine where all the people who started the business used to be and you definitely would ask what they were doing before the business came into the scene. Some other people who were rendering some other vital services to the community left what they were doing when motorcycles started offering commercial services in towns. Again, where all these people used to be is an issue and the more important thing is what were they doing before? I have been tempted to go into a number of things as well so I understand what some of these people are going through.

So many people have come to me with some Multi-Level Marketing schemes and you can see some of them talking almost aggressively about the programmes. I looked at some of them an simply kept quiet. Initially I was being diplomatic about turning these people down but when I realized that they were going talk me out of my focus I became straightforward with them. sometimes I was blunt. A lot of these guys who have gone into marketing are people who should have their own products but they do not have the patience to sit down with their brain child and make it work. They are more concerned about cash flow and streams of income instead of sticking to what they are cut out for. you may succeed in some other things but never as much as you would have if you are doing what you are cut out for.

When people try to talk me into marketing a product right now I just show them my series of audio and video CDs, my books and other products. “I have enough products to market,” I now say to them so that they don’t talk me into what they think I can do. So many people have been talked into what their friends think they can do and not what they should be doing.

My challenge as an entrepreneur (28) – Fola Daniel Adelesi

Rejection is a consistent road bloc in the journey of any entrepreneur and our responses to the rejection will simply reveal who we are. Some people withdraw into self-pity after the rejection and the aggressive nature of some people comes out as a result of the rejection. I am not usually surprised when I see young or old entrepreneurs fighting the receptionists or fighting the security guys just to see the “man-in-charge.” Some of the receptionists or the security guys are simply wicked and they sometimes ask the kind of questions that dummies will not ask you so I do not know what name to call them though I do not wish to call them names.

Unfortunately it infuriates me more because I am in the field of Human Capacity Building so I wonder why people employ some misfits into their organizations. The word “misfit” in this context is appropriate because anyone who works with you and has not been trained in the ethics of your business especially the way your visitors should be treated would start out on a plan of action to ruin your business. So many business people think they are making money but if they are aware of how many millions and billions are being turned back from their receptions then they would realize they are not making any money.

I remember walking into a computer manufacturing company with an idea to be sold to the company. I told the receptionist I wanted to talk to the Marketing Manager and the receptionist was asking, “what for?” If the receptionists will take questions on behalf of the Marketing Manager then the Marketing Manager is useless! I gave a hint on why I needed to see the Marketing Manager and the young lady proceeded to ask me some other foolish questions. I kept calm but I was furious within. I felt like lashing out at her because if she knows the definition of business and if she had read her employment letter then she would understand that it is not her job to “sieve” people who come into the organization. A lot of us are like the proverbial books that should not be judged by the cover. Some people have met me and are really surprised by my real personality. Sometimes I look too small compared to the capacity of the person they have heard about so when they are looking for me they expect to see a tall guy with a broad chest always dressed in suit.

People should always have it in mind that there are some of us who do not have identity crisis so we can wear anything and still know so well who we are. I do not need a suit to tell me who I am and I don’t have to wear what everybody wears so that I can be accepted in the society. I want to go to places where I am accepted just the way I am and not where I have to dress to look like someone else.

In some other offices where they don’t seem to look at what I wear, they just collect the letters brought to them and file the letters. The letters sometimes never get to the appropriate quarters. Let me warn you if you are involved in this kind of act in your office. You cannot hinder the progress of others and keep progressing. If you want someone to be stuck on one spot, most times you would have to be there to keep the person on that spot. You will stay down to keep people down! The way up is to let people go up! I have had to make several phone calls consistently to follow up some proposals but you often find out that the people in charge are doing nothing about the proposals but they keep assuring you that they are doing something about it. After some time their phone lines become inaccessible. Out of every ten people you meet, you may find only one acceptance but it is not a reason to stop. I had to keep at it and I kept learning. Rejection can be discouraging but it does equip your inner man from time to time.

My challenge as an entrepreneur (27) – Fola Daniel Adelesi

I can call this one the voyages of an entrepreneur and I am sure many other young entrepreneurs would have experienced the same thing. Except for those who have some big leverages to start with, you sure would be able to identify with this one. On several occasions in the city of Ago-iwoye, if you know that town in Ijebu North Local Government of Ogun State, I have had cause to walk from a place called Ita-Merin to Igan road and then to the campus area of Olabisi Onabanjo University.

One of my highly revered friends, Oyinkansola Alabi, who was staying behind on campus at that time because she was retained as the campus pastor of Springs of Life Fellowship, wanted my service and I had to go over to see her. She was staying in Lecturers’ quarters, Awa, Oru at that time and I was staying in Ago-Iwoye. When she sent her message I was actually walking down to Ita-Merin from Igan road so as soo as I got her message I just took one of the things I was going to need in her place and started another walk from Ago-Iwoye to Awa, another town within the local government just to do business.

There was a day I needed to get some materials for my audio production and printer from the computer village in Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria. I had enough cash to go down but there would be no cash to come back but I had a choice. What did I do? Business must continue so I went on to the village to get the things I wanted to get. When I had gotten all the things I wanted to get I started walking from Ikeja to Ojota. I really do not know the distance but I might just get someone to tell me the distance so that I can tell you later.

I needed to travel one morning but I did not have any cash to travel. It was an important journey so all I could do was to visit Pneuma Bookstore, one of the book stores that sell my materials. I did not even have enough cash to move from my house to where Pneuma Bookstore is located so I did something very simple. If I was to go by a bus I would have boarded a bus from Mile 12 to Ojota and then go on a bike from Ojota to Ikosi road in Ikeja. Since there was no money I had to trek from Mile 12 to Ketu Bus stop. From Ketu bus stop I turned right and walked straight down so that I could use a pedestrian bridge connecting Ketu to Ikeja. When I was climing the bridge I was in ketu but by the time I was climing the bridge I was already in Ikeja. What a wonderful bridge! The bridge I am talking about is very close to Seven Up bottling company and Pneuma Book Store is on the street behind Seven Up so I patiently walked down through the street.

Getting to the book store was a great relief but I had a shocker-in-waiting when I got to the book store! The security guys told me that the bookstore was not going to open, for that day, until it was 12pm. When I looked at my wrist watch it was barely 9am! I was not going to be allowed to stay in the premises without a purpose so I had to walk out of the premises back to Mobolaji Johnson Avenue, where Seven Up is located. I walked the length of Mobolaji Johnson Avenue and connected with some other streets whose names have I cannot remember but I was headed for the Elephant Cement House which was on a street behind Lagos Television in Ikeja.

The voyage within the Elephant House was another issue. I wanted to see Mr. Debo Abodunrin of CMOE consulting. I left his complimentary card at home but I remember he said the office was on the fourth floor of wing F. The security guy at the door misled me. I was in the backyard but I was thinking it was wing F. I moved round the whole complex from first floor to about the sixth floor. I walked from door to door but did not see any name. Unfortunately the number of the man was on the card that I left at home. The endless search took my time until it was 12pm so I walked from Elephant House back to Pneuma Book Store on Ikosi road. The store had finally opened when I got there and was glad to see that they had sold some of my CDs so I gladly walked up the Mr. Kunmi, the Manager of the store. When I finished talking I realized he couldn’t help. Yes they are my CDs but I did not inform him that I was going to come for some cash. So he gave me a date that was a about two weeks away from the day I went to the store. Again, I began another walk back to Seven Up so that I could use the Pedestrian bridge connecting Ikeja to ketu. I continued from Ketu to Mile 12 and then to Agiliti where I had my first office. I have done series of walking. I only mentioned some.

My challenge as an entrepreneur (26) – Fola Daniel Adelesi

One of the things that I have settled in my mind is that challenges will never end. You will have to live with them for the rest of your life because it is challenges that will reveal who you are and they will be your tickets to access some locked doors. You don’t get promoted in life if you do not have some challenges you are dealing with and the challenges will make you credible enough to talk to some other people. Some people will tell you point blank that you are not qualified to talk to them if you have not been through what they have been through.

 

Your challenges are the certifications you have to counsel people around you. Don’t just grab the microphone when you only have the theories. I will advise you wait till you have been beaten, battered and bashed before you plan to address a group of people who have learnt the art of smiling through pains. You have read about two of my successful book launches and you may be thinking they were amazing. Before you start calculating without any reality in your mind let me give you a bit of what I went through after the launching.

 

Several cheques came in during and immediately after the book launch and some others did not come in instantly. As for the ones that I got immediately, some did not give me any problem but others did. I remember entering a bank and was told to contact the owner of the account. I am sure you know what that means. I got cheques from different banks and had to go from one bank to another nearly everyday. All these were not the real challenges since the money was coming in and I was doing some of the things I wanted to at the time. My real headache came with a cheque from an institution. It was a chque of N25,000 but I had to start counting days and then weeks and then months for the cheque to be finally approved. I was told to write a letter formally requesting action to be taken on the donation made publicly. After writing the letter I needed to wait for some time.

 

Several issues came up in the organizations and there were industrial actions in between. My letter was received in July but the approval for the cheque did not come until October. October! Yes you saw what I wrote clearly. Waiting for a cheque from July to October meant traveling for two hours from one state to another almost every week, though I had some other things to do there. So don’t think I was going solely for the cheque. It was not an interesting thing for me at all because the cheque had been spent before it came so the figure was just as useful as the paper on which it was written. Even though it tarried, I waited for it and it came to pass. One other thing I did not fail to do was to make sure that there is a copy of that cheque in my file. You know that the big name on the cheque can be a reference point for me later.

 

Waiting can be frustrating sometimes but it does help so wait for it.  

My challenge as an entrepreneur (25) – Fola Daniel Adelesi

Let me say emphatically that my launching was a success because of some of the challenges I had gone through. You have read some of them and I am still going to talk about some of them now and even later. I am sure you have not forgotten I said that I prepared my book launch with ten thousand naira. That sounds ridiculous to some people and by now you might be asking what kind of launching it was.

Don’t forget that I did several conferences and seminars that landed me in debts so I greatly utilized the lessons from the previous seminars when I needed to do my book launch. Don’t forget that I had been writing and speaking consistently with or without pay so I was building relationships and gaining credibility from students and lecturers at the same time. Don’t forget that it was consistency that helped me scale through the screening exercise where the representatives of the school at Nigeria International Model United Nations were selected.

After my selection to represent the school I met with the Dean of student affairs and the Deputy Registrar, students. I also met with the Welfare Officer of the university who accompanied us to Port-Harcourt and Abuja respectively. I sustained my relationships even after the conferences so when I needed to do my book launch it was much easier than it would have been for many other people who do not have the kind of relationships that I have. I needed to use one of the big halls in the university without paying a penny. The university does not charge for the halls but again I am sure you have not forgotten the bureaucracies I told you about. I sometimes wonder why it takes donkey years to do what can be done in a few minutes and executed in a few hours.

I did not have to go through all of that again. I only directed my letter to the Dean of faculty of Science, the one who would approve the letter, through the Dean of Students, Professor Dolapo Alabi, the one who knew me so well. He simply wrote a sentence on my letter and asked me to take it to the faculty of science. By the time I went back for my approval I realized that the letter was approved the following day. Now let me tell you the gravity of that instant approval. I once requested to use the same hall that I used for my book launch. I wrote my letter well in advance and kept visiting the office in charge to get my approval. Days after days and weeks after weeks went by without any approval yet and the conference date was drawing near. I fixed a deadline when I expected to get the approval. I changed my venue since they did not meet my deadline and started my publicity with the new venue in view. You will be surprised that the letter requesting approval from the university for an auditorium was sent to the Directorate of student affairs a day before the conference was to be held and at a time when non of the staff could perform a magic. The officer who would attend to the letter would only see it in the morning, the day for the conference, and would still send it back to the faculty for final approval. If I waited for all this imagine what mess would be made out of the conference.

I took a great advantage of my relationships (built since year one) with some top management officials to give the book launch a face lift. The Vice-Chancellor was hooked up in a meeting and could not attend but there was a strategic plan on ground. I had successfully brought Mr. Chika Nwaozuzu, the Faculty Adviser of Nigeria International Model United Nations’ Society (NIGMUNS) from Abuja since we had participated in their conferences and I had been appointed as Secretary General of year 2008. I knew that the Vice-Chancellor would gladly host Mr. Chika so what I did was to talk to the Dean of Students, Professor Alabi. Professor Alabi was talking to the vice-chancellor and I was talking to Mr. Chika. That was the secret of getting Mr. Chika to meet the vice-chancellor and I took great advantage to present my books to the vice-chancellor. He talked about youth endeavours and he launched my book publicly. Trust me. I took pictures with all the principal officers of the university and a hot shot with the vice-chancellor. Don’t miss hot shots when you can get them. You never can tell where they will be useful.

My challenge as an entrepreneur (24) – Fola Daniel Adelesi

A lot of people have asked me questions about how I fund the publishing of my books especially because they knew I did not have any income apart from the honourarium I was given after speaking in some meetings. Some of the envelopes given during those times could barely cover for transportation back home and in so many cases there were no envelopes at all. I just look at myself and laugh when I remember that my first envelope after speaking in a meeting while still in secondary school or call it high school was two hundred naira (N200). That was a budget for a high school modest launch!

With time I started packaging some of my lectures on CDs for sale and it was not bringing in so much profit because some people didn’t want to buy from a speaker whose face was not familiar to them. Others who wanted to buy only expressed desires. They didn’t have money, or so I taught so I sometimes got so angry that they could not afford a cheap CD and would give it out to them. The only other income that I got was my allowance as a university student at that time and I have talked about how the allowance I had not received had gone into somebody else’s pocket already because I had done conferences that left me with debts. So I obviously did not save enough money to be able to publish a book.

Apart from my first book which was sponsored by the university management, the second was a little hectic. What I refer to as a little hectic here would mean terribly hectic to another person. From May 22nd 2007, I started writing for sponsorship of my book. I wrote directly to the head of the organization. I wrote to the manager of the publishing outfit in order to negotiate an installment payment mode. The head of the organization was not responding so I started writing to him through some of his subordinates who were held in high esteem. The subordinates also helped by writing internal memo and attaching them to my original letters. This went on until May 2008. Remember I had been writing since May 2007. I printed several letters and made several photocopies as a proof of follow up. I made series of endless calls and sent emails but there was no result. I had tried a couple of other places and I remember very well that one of the people I approached said that the money I was requesting was enough to start a publishing out fit of my own. I wrote to some others who simply filed my letters in their cabinets and that was it.

Finally, my 23rd birthday was approaching in year 2008 and I wanted the new book to be one of the things I could point to. I had a goal but some bottle necks were standing in the way so I changed my strategy. I woke up one morning with ten naira in my pocket and I opened my mouth to say that I am not coming back to this house with anything less than ten thousand naira. Though I did a little calculations of some money I expected but that will not make up to ten thousand. Just as I walked out of my room, less than five minutes after speaking in faith, I was called upon and offered fifty thousand naira. I will talk more about this partnership later. With the fifty thousand, I called the publisher, paid forty so that he could commence work and I used ten thousand to prepare the launching. Some books were made available and the launching yielded more than two hundred thousand naira already received. Sounds nice but read about the challenges of the launching.