My Life As An Entrepreneur

When Pastor [Mrs.] Aity Dennis-Inyang finished the editing and proofreading of my latest book, Learn It! Do It! Sell It! – 3 Incredibly Simple Ways To Creating Enduring Wealth, she said to me, “Publisher, I think it’s about time you write about your life as an entrepreneur. I’m sure many people would like to know that aspect of your life.”

“I will give it a thought,” I said, not quite sure how many people out there would be interested in the story of an ex-soldier, ex-sports reporter, and semi-retired entrepreneur working full-time in a Help Ministry as the General Overseer.

Okay, don’t take that last part of my hurriedly coined CV seriously. I was just trying to say, in other words, that I’m a full-time manager of the NGO that my wife, Esther, and I founded, Success Attitude Development Centre [SADC], which is a help ministry guiding interested Nigerians to become successful entrepreneurs.

Besides, the books that I’ve written, namely How To Make It In Nigeria Building Your Wealth From Ground Floor Up; Ideas – the Starting Point of All True Riches; How To Bullet Proof Yourself From Poverty; How the Seven Laws of Success Changed the Entire Course of My Life and What They Don’t Teach You At Lagos Business School, all gave various Insights Into my exciting entrepreneurship career.

So I didn’t really think I needed to devote another book to my life as an entrepreneur. But on a second thought – remember that I promised Pastor Aity Dennis-Inyang that I would think about it? – I decided it would not be a bad idea at all.

One, there are so many Nigerians who are in business today all because they read how GOD lifted my wife and I from nobodies to people they could come to for advice. These people, I told myself, would benefit greatly from the effort I will put into writing such a book if I could go for it.

Two, it has always been my contention that one of the ways that the majority of Nigerians whom GOD blessed abundantly have short-changed their compatriots is their failure to document, in a book, how GOD led them to the position of affluence, power, and uncommon achievements that have become their heritage.

Go to any well-stocked bookstore in Nigeria and you will hardly find a book written by all the great men and women of high accomplishments that our nation is blessed with. I think it is a shame because such books if they were available, would have served as a road map for younger generations coming after them.

I know all about the reasons [I call them mere excuses] that some of these high-flying achievers give for not putting pen to paper to document their successes so that others will benefit from it. One such excuse is that Nigerians don’t read books. If that were to be true, who are those buying the ones I wrote?

But thank GOD for a country like the United States of America where almost everyone that has achieved a measure of success, in one area or the other, finds a book publisher to preserve how the success was accomplished. And if they can’t find a book publisher, they resort to self-publishing.

Okay, enough said about that. Let me get back to the focus of my present endeavor which is not to write a book but to seize the opportunity presented by SuccessDigest to serialize my experience as an entrepreneur.

Who knows, if the feedback I receive is great and our readers demonstrate that they love my story, then I could think of turning it into a book. But not until then!

So, in case you are wondering why I’ve decided to bring out the skeletons of my business career, which have been hidden in the closet of my entrepreneurial mind all these years, now you know.

Let me make some things clear about this work I’m embarking on just to set the record straight. First, I have only one overriding reason for parting the curtains, as it were, to reveal the thought processes that drive my business philosophy. And that is to teach those whom I’m mentoring.

I’ve always considered myself a guinea pig of sorts as far as the entrepreneurship game is concerned in Nigeria.

Back in 1984, when my wife and I did what many considered a most foolish thing on earth by quitting a well-paying job to start a business with zero seed capital and a sound idea fueled by an inspiration received from a book written by, [who else?], an American, Napoleon Hill, titled, Think And Grow Rich, there were very few people of my age at that time who could dare to take such step and hang in there as we did.

Because of the way GOD’s mighty hands have sustained us, today you have thousands of Nigerians participating in the entrepreneurship game, and doing extremely well too, as a result of the example we have set.

That is why I said I’m like a guinea pig that is used for scientific experiments. My career as a business owner is nothing but a scientific experiment on how to succeed as a bootstrap entrepreneur in a hostile business climate like Nigeria’s. And I give glory to GOD because it is a privilege.

Second, I have to warn you, before we get too deep into inspecting the skeletons hidden in the deepest part of my business closet, that if you don’t have the stomach to hear my testimonies about what GOD did to make all these things happen, then you should not bother reading this column over the following several weeks, even months, ahead.

Why? Because, as you would have already noticed, this series is going to be about all the things GOD has done in our lives. There is nothing that we have that He did not give to us. And ALL the glory must be given to Him.

Three, as a result of what I have just said, you will read a lot of things that will appear as if I’m boasting to you. But in actual fact, they are not my deeds but what GOD did, using us as a vessel of honor in His hands.

When you read such things, try not to see my wife and I. Instead, I want you to see GOD. For example, today, none of our businesses is operating on bank loans or overdrafts. While I cannot claim that we are the only people in business who have this experience, the truth is that my wife and I have realized that for us it was only our Father in heaven that could have made it happen for us.

I mean, who are we, considering both our backgrounds, to walk the face of the earth without being indebted to any man or institution, having spent more than two-thirds of our 27 -years in business wallowing in debt?

But if you can bear with me as I give honor to Him who rescued us from financial bondage, I can assure you that you will experience a dramatic turnaround in your own finances because I will tell you exactly what we did and how we did everything that took us from where we were to where GOD has brought us today.

Okay, I think that is enough in terms of setting the stage for the kind of stuff I’ll be sharing with you in this column in the weeks ahead. I know it’s going to be powerful stuff, even though I’m the one saying so.

Be sure not to miss next Monday’s edition of SuccessDigest which goes daily as from today to the glory of GOD Almighty.

Quote:

“My career as a business owner is nothing but a scientific experiment on how to succeed as a bootstrap entrepreneur in a hostile business climate like Nigeria’s. And I give glory to GOD because it is a privilege”