We keep hoping that things will change and then we keep hoping that the person who will change things will come. when it looks as if the person is not forthcoming then we begin to pray for the person to come in time but something that seems to be missing in our various communities is not being addressed and things may continually fall apart if we don’t address them right now.

Why in the first place did things fall apart? They fell apart because our values began to change and when our values began to change our results also began to change because the outer results must correspond with the inner workings and calculations. We as human beings used to be hungry for impact but in the world today we have left the thirst for impact and are now expecting other people to impact our lives. Why did we leave the thirst for impact? Why did we go after the thirst for self satisfaction rather than helping someone to get out of pain?

We are always thinking about making our world a better place but we have forgotten that the easiest way to make our world a better place is to make it a better place for somebody else first and then it would be better for us.

What have you come to this earth to do? Why are you in the community that you live in? why are you working in that office where you work? You will be doing yourself a great disservice if you think you are only in that office just to get paid. You may be getting a fat pay cheque but you a loosing a life time opportunity to impact someone you are supposed to impact.

If you are not happy about the things that going on around you I must say it is so because you are not yet hungry for impact. How can you live for 5 years in a place and nobody knows you or has ever felt the impact of your activities? How can you be in the same class with someone and they have nothing to remind them about you when you all have to do indifferent directions? What will be said about you when you think it is time to leave a place? Would they be glad that you are leaving because you had no impact or maybe you had a negative one? Would the people be sad that you are leaving because they are thinking they would have to do a thorough job to get someone as effective as you are? Being hungry fir impact is not about you having several choice cars at your disposal. This is not about getting the best of apartments in the most luxurious spots in the cities.

Your hunger for impact is proven in the lives of those who think they would not have made it without your contribution. Imagine someone getting a free house from you instead of you owing more than two homes when someone else would be homeless! Imagine restricting yourself to two cars when you want more than three just to pay the school fees of that child that does not have an idea of what to call a future! Imagine deciding to wear some cheap clothes so that you could clothe some naked people! Imagine the joy of a man who was born to write getting a dream laptop from you! Imagine a man who was born to sing getting your sponsorship for his first album. Imagine the people who should sleep with empty stomach going to bed rejoicing because of the food stuff in your house that you split in half and sent to them! What message can you preach to hungry people without feeding them?

Life has a barrage of problems just as it has a barrage of opportunities but we are not getting the opportunities because we always do not want to be a part of the problem solving. Everybody is busy with his or her personal problem and we have refused to think about others. When we don’t think about others we would be amazed that others will not think about us and since we are not designed to live like islands will be grounded. Relax about some of your problems and lend a helping hand to others. The next person you are helping may be your long awaited solution. Even if the person is not, what do you stand to lose by helping someone in need?

Waiting for the right time has always been your excuse not to do what you were supposed to have done. You knew it was supposed to be done. You also have the conviction that you are the right person to do it but you are looking for the best time to do.

Isn’t is time to be sincere with yourself about the fact that there is no better to follow up those dreams other than now! Last year was supposed to witness the execution of those deals and now you claim not to know enough to get things done so you waited for this year. In every season that is good enough for the project to kick off you keep talking about one or two other things that have not been in place so you eventually became a perfectionist because you were looking for the right time to do things.

If we really have to get down to the bottom line then we must admit that there is no right time because the right time will mean waiting till everything is perfect and there will be no time when things will be perfect. There will only be times that you can take advantage of to make things perfect.

You are getting older by the day and you are still waiting for the right time. You are getting involved in a project that requires some energy to jump about yet you are waiting for the right time when your energy would probably be failing you.

It is time to step out and stop making excuses for the things you are afraid of doing. Stop being scared about the size of your dreams. You may really have big and intimidating dream but your dream cannot be as intimidating as the thought of creating the whole world. Your biggest dreams will live in this world. Your wildest dreams will be to expand the way the world thinks way being the first to think in a direction. Your intimidating dreams will be about doing something that has never been done on this earth.

In all of your imagination, no dream of yours can replace this earth. In your wildest dreams, you cannot think about creating another earth. You cannot, with all the resources available in the world think about creating another world even if you are immortalized by permission to live forever. Yet someone created this world and did it in six days! So how big can your dream be to be good enough to intimidate you?

The size of what intimidates you is a proof of the size of your inner man. If you are small on the inside you will be intimidated by small things. When you get bigger then bigger things will comes. When it looks like things are never going to be done, the challenge in front of you is just a replica of your capacity. When you step out to achieve the seemingly unachievable then you rise to a new cadre.

I do not particularly think there is a strategy for overcoming the intimidating challenges. Just as the hammer hits the wall until it’s weak enough to go down, don’t stop trying.

It is with great pleasure and with joy that knows no bound that I welcome you all to the 2008 Nigeria International Model United Nation’s Conference.

We in the secretariat duly acknowledge that this endeavour has continued with the great support received from all ambassadors here present and those who have attended the past editions. Thank for your support and I want to implore you to continually give this support because we will call for it from time to time.

As against our last deliberation which centered on INJURY PREVENTION AND SAFETY PROMOTION: OUR COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY, we are taking a giant step further in the same line by critically examining CLIMATE CHANGE, OUR GLOBAL CONCERN.

I have no doubt that the ambassadors here have done a great research regarding the theme for this year so I will not want to take too much of our time by breaking down the theme.

I think all the issue of climate change points to the fact that we as individuals have series of activities going – from using automobiles for survival to burning for consumption – everyday but the danger is that we have not taken time to consider the adverse effects of those activities on our environment. The bottom line is that our ignorance is beginning to beckon. As much as it is important to use automobiles that produce carbon-monoxide and to sometimes burn some of our wastes, I challenge everyone here to think about ways with minimal or no adverse effects to carry out all our compulsory daily activities.

Just as the global climate is changing and we are here to discuss some solutions to be put to use, please set in motion a change for the climate of your future by breaking out of your shell to meet other ambassadors. Do not forget that one of the purposes of this forum is to promote peace among nations and races.

If I were you, I would spend this week as if it is my last week on earth. I would look for every opportunity to add value to a fellow ambassador. I wish you all fruitful deliberations and please make sure your points of orders are in order.

Fola Daniel Adelesi
2008 Secretary General,
Nigeria International Model United Nation’s Conference.

Knowing what to write may be easy. Having the resources to publish may not be an issue. Finding who to sell to will definitely be an issue when you start out and if you are not careful you are going to ruin your business.

Some of the challenges some authors have when they want to write a book is the challenge of carefully choosing the book titles. In the bid to make sure that the book title is catchy enough some people blow it off. They eventually make the book title repelling as against the intention to make it attract. Well I think I just had that gift with titles such that there is no one who sees my titles and does not ask one or two more questions as a result of curiosity. Some of them arouse such a great suspense that you have no idea what’s in the book by merely looking at the title. You may have to read about the book or look through the table of content to get a faint picture on the real content.

I had succeeded in publishing some books and the next challenge after publishing was the issue of selling price for your book, selling place for the books and your prospective authors. One of the things that I did after publishing was to first sell my books to the people I had been privileged to lead in various leadership positions I held at various times. They in turn begin to recommend to their friends just you may already know that word of mouth advertisement is the greatest advertisement for any product anywhere in the world.

When I finished with those ones I moved over to friends but I still had a challenge because some people saw the books, wanted the books desperately but did not have the cash when the books were available. That makes us come to where can we get your books? Initially I had problems with distribution. I could only take the books to the few book stores that I knew and some of the books stores were far away from where some of my potential buyers were living so we had to start racking our brains again.

Later I got a solution for those who were willing to pay a little extra for the books. I did ask them to give me their postal addresses and that I was going to post the books to them on the condition that they were willing to bear the cost of posting the book. For those who were willing to bear the cost of posting the book it worked but one challenge I had with that was that I always wanted the books delivered anywhere within the country and even around the world in maximum of three days. This meant that within the country sometimes the cost of posting was three times the selling price of the book.

Another solution came for distribution. I was in a business meeting one day when someone came to introduce himself as a member of the Christian book sellers’ association and that the office for the South West region I Nigeria was just right under my nose. That eased the challenge of distribution a little.

A business person you always have to think about the strategies for selling your products and services. This simple issue is the reason some people don’t win the contracts they expect to win or get funds for the projects. The people can see you have a great idea but they want to see a feasible strategy for selling the product to the society because the success of a product is not only in its production but in its acceptance by the prospective market for the product or you call it market penetration.

As for me I was able to take a great advantage of public speaking to sell my products and I would say that in so many ways, personal branding contributed to the sales of my products.

I have been told in more times than I can recall that the taste of the tea bag only comes out when you put it in the hot water. All of the challenges I have written about have definitely brought out a great taste in me and the only thing I want to do in the 50th of the series on my challenges id to recount some of my blessings as a result of the challenges I have gone through and I am still going through.

At the time I started writing these series on challenges my organization was already in its sixth year. There has been intimidating predictions about several organizations not exceeding their fifth year. The organization is not only in its sixth year, it has succeeded in organizing at least a major conference every year in the areas of business, motivation and leadership. Despite all the hardships the speaking invitations are increasing and the privilege to impact lives is also increasing. People have discovered their purposes through some of our programmes and by the tenacity we also exhibit for the visions that we have.

In the space of the first six years I published my first collection of poems in 2005 where I motivated 18 other authors to summit their poems so that we could co-author a book with all expenses fully paid for by my university. In the year 2008 with just and interval of six months I was able to publish two major books that I authored alone (INDEBTED TO IGNORANCE AND WRITING BUSINESS PROPOSAL)

I started the organization in 2002 in the corner of my dormitory in Mayflower school, Ikenne while I was still the Senior Prefect so there was no way I could have taught about an office. My only office was my head for about the first five years of the organization because of my education. I had to focus, even if I was pretending, on my education so that my parents would not think their money was being wasted. Immediately after graduation from the university I was able to open my first office which was close to being an abandoned room on the ground floor of our building. I had been able to gather hundreds of materials on leadership, business, motivation and spiritual issues both in print and in the electronic media such that I had to make arrangements for other people to begin to borrow from the personal library in my office.

There was no time that my account balance, both current and savings, could explain the magnitude of some of the projects that I carried out. Some things worked simply by faith. I always had a barrage of wisdom from God and that gave me a huge leverage to get out of troubles and also advance to the next level.

I didn’t write any letter to anybody requesting donation to be able to buy any of the major office equipments that I used in the first six years of the business. I also started producing audio CDs and videos of lecture series of the organization within the first three years. At first I was giving it out but increasing capacity was necessary for me. I did that and I have since been producing my CDs. I have also been privilege to teach others how to produce their CDs without being held to ransom by any multimedia producer.

In terms of intellectual properties I must be humble in saying that the organization has several products each worth some millions if the rights to the products were to be sold. I have received several requests to write business proposals for individuals and I have done the same for companies all the mouth mouth-watering pay packs.

I had been privileged to speak in the least expected places and meeting some of the most revered people in the society. My books and CDs have traveled far and wide and they are still spreading the more especially with great impact. Sometimes I don’t realize how famous I have become until I get on the streets and I hear people calling me from different corners. A whole lot of the time they had to help me out by reminding me where we met or how they got to know me.

Let me confidently say that all the things I have experienced are beyond human wisdom. They are the Lord’s doing and they are overwhelmingly intimidating. I taught about giving up but things kept springing up.

Who knows what you do is going to be one of the greatest challenges that you will have as an up coming entrepreneur. You are simply in business because you want some people to know what you are doing and if you refuse to make noise about what you are doing then you should not be in business.

It is very easy to get scared about the cost of publicity for any kind of business but the most important thing, I think, is that a lot of people have their publicity focus on the wrong thing. They want the very big and conspicuous kinds of publicity that companies who have been in existence for several decades are running. It is not in any way wrong to dream big but for a young entrepreneur I realized that one of the challenges of my business was publicity. People needed what I had to sell but they need to know where to get my services and where to get my products.

From time to time I tried one on one marketing but I soon realized the limitation of the marketing strategy. If you only want to go by one on one marketing then your marketing mostly would be restricted to the area where you find yourself. As much as you should engage in marketing to people personally, don’t forget that anybody who comes to that same place where you did your marketing immediately after you leave will not have the privilege of seeing your services, products or better still, your marketing approach if it is needed. With time I realized I needed a mark in every place I went to.

For a long time I was thinking about what to do to make sure that my products were know. I sat for days simply because I needed to push put my books and CDs. One day an idea struck and it has yielded an amazing result for me. I think that young entrepreneurs should be thinking about creative ways to do their marketing with a low cost budget. When the idea of creative marketing with low cost budgeting came to me I knew I was on the way to blowing up the products and I eventually did.

Instead of thinking of how to raise money for expensive adverts on TV and radio, all I did was to spend some time watching a few meaningful programmes and listening to some educative programmes on radio. Each time I made sure that the name of the producer or the presenter sticks so the next line of action is to walk into the radio station and negotiate, not beg. I said negotiate because a lot of people who want media attention are going there to beg for the attention since they did not take their time to study the programme. When I study a programme it helps me know what kind of things I can say to the presenter to appeal to him or her and to get what I want but I also have something to offer in return. There was a time I gave a media house 20 copies of my book for their phone in programme. This was a great opportunity for them because Christmas was approaching and they were looking for what to give to their audience.

When I started using the idea of offering my products to the media houses to get some interviews and consequently advertise what I do, I was able to secure 3 major TV interviews in one media house. I got a full hour interview with a radio station, 30 minutes with another radio, 10 minutes with another TV, a full page with the most widely read newspaper in the country and a full page with another regional newspaper.

I have since gotten countless interviews from the media on their request but imagine what it would have cost me to start by making payment for every advert.

Apart from appearing on TV and going for radio interviews some other simple things I did included printing stickers. When I visit some places today I see my stickers on their door posts and some of these places are the least expected places. My stickers created a suspense in the hearts of people because they had some nice catchy quotes that were divinely inspired so everyone wanted to meet the writer. Don’t forget that stickers have a long life span so it keeps advertising me so long as it is there. I also cultivated a habit of writing for nearly every event I attended. I would write very inspiring stories and put my blog on the papers. My phone numbers and emails were on the papers but what I did was to print a copy and make several photocopies. The response was amazing.

It’s amazing to see how people treat you like a king while trying to get you to speak in a programme only for you to get there to face the shocking truth that they never really had a plan for you to be on the programme schedule. This is one thing that can drain the energy and resources of a public speaker and an author.

If I have to start counting there is no way I can give you the accurate figures. As a matter of fact I think I have lost count on the number of programmes where organizers get you to council some of the programmes on your schedule because they want you to speak in their meetings and at the end of the day they tell you all sort of stories about what went wrong or what someone did not do.

There was a programme I went for somewhere in Lagos to address the youths of the organizations. The organizers of the programme had told me I was going to be speaking for one hour and they had given me a time. One of the things I always work on is to make sure that I keep to the time given to me by the people inviting me for a programme but on several occasions I can see that the organizers are not even prepared for the time given to me. When they eventually start they will then begin to tell you that they have some other speakers and that they are trying to sort the programme schedule. When they eventually come back to you, may be a few minutes before you get on stage, they will tell you all you have is twenty minutes to deliver what they initially told you to deliver in one hour.

As a versatile speaker this does not amaze me. I fix into whatever time they give to me because I have done several impromptu speeches and many more are still on the way but it gets on my nerves because I probably have told some other people that the whole day is fixed. This makes me spend several hours in places where I should not spend more than thirty to forty minutes since the people only want me to speak for twenty minutes. They make me lose some of the time I could spend preparing for another lecture or writing some new manuscripts.

In any of those moments I always have something in my hand I can read or maybe my electronic Bible but I am not always comfortable because that was not the original plan for the moment. It only comes up as something I am doing to make up for the time being spent.

There are a few instances were you will realize you were meant to be a standby speaker. This means you are not the person they really want but in case their choice speaker does not turn up for the programme then they give you all the time in the world. If you know where you are going and you know the stuff you are made up of you will not get annoyed about this. In the media it is what we call the space fillers. You were not in the original plan but they had you on board because plan ‘A’ was not working. If you take advantage of this moment and maximize it then you will be amazed how you will soon begin to relegate their choice speakers. I have been to a number of places to speak and I knew so well that giving me their microphone was like a trial and error stuff for them but I am sure they got the shock of their lives.

Just as I take advantage of this medium to welcome the “future” of Nigeria labeled as delegates of various countries to the Nigeria International Model United Nations’ Conference, it is of the essence to emphatically state that the first phase of the much desired climate change should, in my opinion, unashamedly, commence in our minds. This is the only platform that presents to us an opportunity to fashion out our desired society. No longer should we live in a society governed by a plethora of activities but with a negligible level of thinking. Come alive in your minds!

I am undoubtedly hopeful, having been spurred by two times participation in this conference, 2006 and 2007 respectively, that the Nigerian students carry in their bosoms the solution to a society like ours intertwined by strings of greed, half-baked leadership and shortsighted projection. NIGIMUN has consistently broadened the minds of participants and has again brought to our solution table one of the life-threatening issues that we face in the society. Let us together perceive that the whole idea is NIGIMUN standing as a taskmaster but this time around not in front of slaves but in front of “think-tanks.” Let us together accept the responsibility of solving the problems of the society. I have come across many problem analysts. I see them on daily basis. I hear them all the time but the most interesting thing is that monuments only get erected because of problem solvers and not the analysts.

On the other hand, just as you are preparing to attend this year’s conference, bear it in mind that the beauty of the whole thing is not in coming to prove to somebody that you are more intelligent. As much as we recognize and appreciate intelligence, we definitely want to see team spirit in display. Ambassadors should note that we in the secretariat would look forward to careful application of the terminologies of the Model United Nations as contained in the rules of procedure that will reach you before the conference. Sometimes it is fun to hear “point of order, point of information” and so on but it can be spine tingling when used out of context.

As I conclude, I want to specially appreciate all the ambassadors of various countries with embassies in Nigeria that have associated with NIGIMUN to make it a success over the years. All partners or sponsors and government agencies that have recognized NIGIMUN are also duly appreciated but we must say that passion for performance comes alive when hope is rekindled. We need more of your support to engage people’s minds positively. “Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well and must be done with undivided attention” – on the banks of committedly irrevocable support. “Point of information:” you are welcome to the 2008 Nigeria International Model United Nations’ Conference holding at the International Conference Centre, Abuja.

May God bless the work of your hands!

Fola Daniel Adelesi,
Secretary General,
NIGIMUN 2008

Understanding timing is one art that can kill or build your business if you do not pay attention to it.

One of the things I have always wanted to do is to take advantage of timing for anything I sell. When you have a product and you don’t understand the timing then it is going to reflect on your sales. There was a day I was invited to speak in a place and I was to talk about business for starters just to get some idle people off the ground. I was also to talk to some of the people who had started something about creativity as a way of boosting their productivity but I went there with only 20 copies of my CDs and with less than 10 copies of my books.

When I finished my lecture the Pastor of the church requested copies of my materials so I gave him all I had. The next thing he said was that I had underrated his church. He personally sold everything I went with to the members of the church and came back to remind him that I had underrated his church.

I would not have gone with any CD but it struck me the previous day that I would be speaking and that the people would want some of my materials. It seemed as if I made some money coupled with the honourarium I was given after speaking in the meeting but if I am to be sincere with myself I didn’t make any money compared to what I could have made. I saw a number of people struggling to get the pastor’s attention so that they could buy a copy of the CD or the book but the pastor did not give them any attention. That would not have happened if I had gone with enough books and CDs.

One of the things I now tell people in the meetings where I speak is about their marketing drive. How could you have heard about a meeting that would be holding in a place where the people are most likely to need your products or services and you go there without any sample of what you do? I always challenge them because some people now use the excuse of not getting the information some days before that meeting. If you are really ready for business you do not need to be given so much time to be ready for your marketing. It has now become a part of me not to go anywhere without copies of my books or CDs. Even when I am tired what I do is to strategically place the materials in my hands so that people can see them and start asking questions. With that my spirit will pick up again and it has worked on several occasions for me.

I think I have lost money on too many occasions simply because I didn’t go to some places with my materials. It’s even more painful when I realize the fact that I have marketing leverage as a public speaker. Most times I don’t talk about my materials until I have finished speaking. Once I finish my speech and before the people recover from the effect of the speech I quickly talk about the books I have written and the CDs that I have brought. That really helps my sales so I no longer care about the inconvenience of carry too many books since there can’t be too much money.    

There has always been the pressure to perform in my business but one thing that has been helping me to forge ahead is that I do not get distracted by the pressure before me. I simply focus on the goal ahead and pay the required price. If you do not know what is expected of you then you will have people telling you what they expect from you. 

From time to time people around me were demanding because they felt that the things I was doing should have started producing results. The problem here is that when you sow your seeds, some people will not allow you to pay the price of patiently waiting for results. They will push and push and push until you begin to manufacture fake results rather than the original results you should have waited for.

When you begin to impress because some people expect that you will have a result, you would have failed in sowing the back up seeds that should produce the required results. i have been pushed at different times to start impressing people who are watching me. People will easily presume that you have arrived. The most important time to realize that you are not more important than any other person is when people try to tell you how important you are. The enemy of the best to come is the good that you already have.

As at the time I published my first book I got so much of encomiums showered on me as if it was not something anybody had done before. At a time people began to approach me for assistance with the Vice-Chancellor even for some irrelevant things and for some other things that anyone who has integrity cannot be involved in. I nearly began to ask if it was a crime to know someone and for people to discover you know that person.

When I published my second book there was this other challenge of people attempting to neglect my weaknesses and over emphasize the things that I can do. I have heard from some orators that when people dislike you, they will exaggerate you weaknesses and when they like you, they will also exaggerate your strengths.

One of the things you will also have coming your way as an entrepreneur who is just beginning to succeed is that people may not tell you where you still need to buckle up. They will say you can do more than you can and you will want to prove it.

Let me seize this opportunity to inform you that the pressure to mature into the oversize shoes that have been paraded as yours kills your business. You go to every dinner to impress, you go to every fund raising to impress, you go to every book launch to impress and you attend every conference to impress. Don’t let people push you to do things to the detriment of your business because I have been pushed over and over again but I keep staying away as much as I can. I have come to realize that when I move at my pace to do things for other people, my business will survive and the people will abuse me for a while. If I move at their pace, my business will soon die and the people who seem to care will disappear and you will probably become a co-beggar in the courtyard of beggars. Don’t impress, don’t impress, don’t impress, don’t impress.