How it all started for me

Of course, I already had a life before I decided to venture into business in 2018.

I didn’t have it all figured out and I still don’t but I had an idea of what I wanted to do with my life.

I wanted to become a lecturer. Actually, when I graduated from secondary school, I chose to study law but I did not get admission that year. This made me rethink what I really wanted.

That was when I decided to study religion the second time and I got admitted to study Religious Studies at the University of Ibadan. This was in 2016 and this plan was not just from the blues, I grew up knowing a successful professor in Religious Studies and I wanted to be like him.

I got into school and I was doing really well academically as I was on a first-class.

However, my life took a different turn in 2018 and I changed my plan. This is why I always tell people not to be scared or shy to change plans or amend their goals.

A lot of things change for people at different points in life due to the availability of information. Most goals are based on things that you grew up seeing or you saw others do. So, if you have new information and you feel you want to change your plans, don’t hesitate to do just that.

Back to what changed exactly for me.

There was a strike in Nigerian universities in 2018 and one particular afternoon while watching YouTube, I got interested in starting a business.

I did not know how to go about it and I honestly did not have money to start a business at this point. In fact, the reason why business interested me was that I knew it could help me make money and help me get rich and leave the broke zone that I was in at that particular point in time.

So, I came up with a business idea named “FRESH FARM PRODUCE”, it was an agri-tech idea. I started pitching the business to people so I could get funding to launch the business. This was around June 2018. However, I was not getting any funding as I was mainly talking to people who didn’t even have money to invest in the business….. Lol

I was also in this particular competition with the “Africa’s Young Entrepreneurs Empowerment Nigeria” (AYEEN) and after going through different phases of the competition, I got to the finals of the competition and I was invited to the finals at Lekki, Lagos.

I will talk about the power of one’s environment in a different blog post.

At the finals in Lekki, Lagos, I still did not get funded but that was exactly where it all changed for me. It was the 25th of November, 2018, it was a Sunday. There was this motivational speaker that was invited to that event from South Africa, his name is Billy Selekane. He talked about how funding was the least of one’s worries in starting out a business. The most important thing is the real desire and determination to start out.

He said a lot of other things but the one that particularly got my attention was this; You can start a business by partnering with someone or helping someone sell and scale from there. That stuck to me and I ruminated over it all through that night.

That was what gave birth to my idea of selling Tie&dye shirts named Poshiwears which I launched on the 30th of November, 2018.

That takes us to another lesson which I will talk about in a separate blog post; ACT FAST!

Once you have an idea, pick it up and act on it as fast as possible and figure things out as you move.

That was how it all started for me and helped my life change greatly within a few years.

See you in the next blog post.

Tamilore,

(The changed man).