Entrepreneurship and Internet age "Entrepreneurs"

Hi there, hope you’re having a good ride on Eagle’s Eye.

While gathering my thoughts about this post, I hoped it doesn’t sound too “academic” by the time I put everything down in black and white. Out of adventure and the quest to acquire relevant academic skills (and qualification) that would provide me with the much needed balance in today’s world where financial freedom matters a lot and everything seems to revolve around the word “business”, I decided to take a course that combines Physical Sciences with Entrepreneurship. This will certainly equip me with the skills needed to be an ‘innovator’ and also for the commercialisation of my innovation. Little did I know that my definition of the concepts I was taking interest in was incorrect.

I once listened to a preacher say to his congregation that “physical needs require physical solutions. If a man needs money, you don’t give him ‘prayers’ or ‘anointing’. Sow into his life!” Expectedly, this aphorism has gained so much popularity among people of the Christian faith especially the younger generation within this group who live in today’s world. Knowledge, they say is Power but financial freedom confers so much relevance and ‘peace of mind’ on an individual or nation, it cannot be ignored. Paying attention to the importance of this issue, I’d add to the above maxim that “…as much as rests within your ability, do not just sow into that man’s life, show him how to get seeds for himself!” Otherwise, he’d constitute himself a nuisance to you and possibly the community. Take it from me, except for some naturally lazy and short-sighted few, no man is happy going to his friend or relation to bail him out of a financial crisis especially if it becomes recurrent.

In today’s world of rapid changes and economic revolution where everyman stands an equal chance of making it to financial Canaan, it therefore becomes important for each individual to equip himself with the tools which are necessary and adequate enough to ensure he is not left behind. People, Market, Technology e.t.c are rapidly changing it’s hard to believe. I believe one of the best things that has happened to man in this 21st century is the revolution in Information Technology; I’ll call this a Tool which has forced itself upon us all as an indispensable towards achieving success almost by any definition in any area of life.

Wait a minute; I am not writing about Info Tech. But Information Technology has arguably turned many to what I call overnight-entrepreneurs at a rate no man would have imagined a few decades ago.

As a student who had sat under the tutelage of some of UK’s renowned entrepreneurship dons, I can authoritatively brand majority of the people who have taken advantage of opportunities such as the internet to make “quick money”, opportunists. These guys have done nothing and absolutely NOTHING wrong. They are just being smart opportunists. I can only laugh at the humour it presents when I hear some say things like “I'm an online Entrepreneur”. And here is a guy who sits at the comfort of his room, subscribes to some "buy one get 10 free" website (which is not bad, mind you) and rakes in some easy dollars. His creative mind is not engaged. Many of today's so-called online entrepreneurs practically do nothing more than introduce a few friends to a network in order to build “a line” and they sit back to watch the cheques rolling in. The guys who convert these online-preneurs initial capital to stream of income are the ones doing the job and your guess is obviously as good as mine; what the online-preneurs get in return is a fraction of the real yield.

You cannot separate Entrepreneurship from Innovation. Now, Innovation is not all about you going to the University to learn how to design a rocket or how to build the world’s latest computers. Innovation does not necessarily need to involve invention of a tangible element or substance. Over the years, Innovation has been confused with Invention. These are two different concepts. Apart from the fact that they are spelt and pronounced differently, their meanings are entirely different, of course, to the mind which is knowledgeable enough to distinguish the difference. Innovation, simply put is the commercialisation of an invention. Your invention may be a tangible or intangible substance. By intangible substance I mean, an idea, a concept, something that cannot be physically handled. There is no gainsaying that originality is very crucial to the success of any Innovation if it would make sense and would not lead to frustration. A tangible substance would therefore by inference be the opposite, i.e a "real" substance such as a new design of your BMW, or an advancement in design of your TV box.

So then, what makes a true Entrepreneur? I’ll attempt to explain in my next post.

Got to catch some sleep now. Later.

The Direction Sign

Call it a Sign Post, Sign Board or Signage, I'm sure we're attempting to describe the same thing/concept.

Have you ever found yourself looking for direction under any circumstance? The Direction Sign is one of the greatest inventions of mankind and has proved tremendously helpful saving time energy and stress to the "lost" or anyone hoping to find their way to a location. Recently, I went for a meeting at Teeside. Later in the day after the meeting, about 60 miles to the end of my 3 hours 45 minutes drive back home, the weather got so bad, and my Sat-Nav lost reception. Here was I in the middle of nowhere hoping to pass the "no signal" region and the Sat Nav would pick up again. No it didn't. I was so reliant on my Nav, I just kept driving on and waiting on this piece of normally intelligent piece of equipment. I wasn't checking the signs, I just carried on. After wandering about for about 15 minutes without any hope that this thing would take me home, I decided to go back to the old way... I followed the direction signs and although I eventually went through the long route, I got home and in one piece!

Sometime in 2007, I had just finished an evening paper. Outside the exam hall and towards the Bus-Stop filled with "examinees" with mixed reactions. It was time for post-examination evaluations and self re-assessment. Voices with different pitches and tones rented the air. It was a bit of a task and struggle trying to hear myself at the top of the myriad of voices competing for space in the air as we waited at the bus-stop by the open field just in front of the sports centre where we all just got 'examined'...It was reminiscent of popular market places in the part of the world where I come from.

"Oh, the time was too short"..."I wrote so much my wrist aches!"...these were some of the common comments that filled my ears. Obviously, it was a good one for some people. Generally the comments reflected optimism and self-satisfaction from majority around except for some few who claimed they went "blank" in the hall.

The crowd was massive. All waiting and hoping to get on the next bus to the Business School campus from where we could all find our ways to our different final destinations. I looked around and it occurred to me that actually, just one bus would be coming and the bus would have been three quarter filled if not totally filled by the time it gets to this stop. That means we may have to struggle for space when the bus arrives which implies that some of us waiting may not get on the bus. While I was doing the calculations in my head, I also realised that out of the people who'd be lucky to get on the bus, some may have to stand. I took a look at my side and saw my friend. She was my classmate but her new status conferred my friend's surname on her. She was heavily pregnant. You could tell that she had had a day and the only ray of joy lining her dark face came from the satisfaction from within based on how well she thought she performed in the examination. She was fagged out! I offered her a space to sit on my Indian friends back!...expectedly she slapped me on the shoulder and reminded me she is somebody's wife...I laughed and told her and my other friends around that if we hope to get on the bus when it arrives then we have to position ourselves strategically to enable us get what I called "first movers advantage" (we had been waiting for nearly 20 minutes). Trust me, that is one of the advantages of being a Nigerian. You're able to calculate and adapt yourself to any situation FAST! I pointed at a spot where I felt the bus would stop and would be a vantage position for US to get on - most likely the door would open at that spot. My friends saw wisdom in my words and strategy. They obeyed without attracting any attention. The bunch of Smarties that we are, we continued our discussions in our smaller group within this group watching and waiting for the bus.

At last the bus came and we started boarding one after the other. As I predicted, there was just few spaces left on the bus and the driver could only take a certain number of people in addition to those already on board for "health and safety" reasons. He motioned them in one after the other. ALL my friends got on board. It got to my turn and the guy said, "Sorry mate, the bus is full!". Pity and unbelief gripped my pregnant friend. She didn't get a seat. She was one of the standees but at least she was on board. She gestured at me for a space on her back. I waved at them as the bus moved off. Then I realised that I wasn't supposed to be standing at that stop in the first instance. There is a shorter route to where I lived. If I went with the school bus, I would change bus twice before arriving at my destination. Whereas, if I just walked out of the gate which was less than 5 minutes walk away, I could get a bus to the city centre where I could take another bus home. I could actually walk home from the city centre. My best route would require just one bus change and bingo, I'm home! Faster, shorter...Very funny.

Immediately, the lesson hit me. Romans 8..."And we know that ALL things work together for good to them that love God...." But as I reflected on this God took me through another lesson. I remembered one of my popular lines as an evangelist on campus during my undergrad days. When I preach to believers, I try to remind us all that we should try not to be like the Direction Sign who directs people to their right destinations but never leaves the same spot itself!

I realised that I could be like that; show people the way of salvation and never get on the bus myself! It was one of the scariest realities that'd ever dawn on me.

It became clear to me that the kingdom of God had just played itself in a drama to me and I was one of the actors. ALL of us at that Bus Stop had just finished taking an examination. By virtue of our studentship at the university, each person believed they "qualified" to get on the bus and so waited for it. Few amongst us knew that waiting at the bus stop was not enough. You need to be strategically positioned to get on the bus because there was limited space. Some of those few of us were not selfish about our inklings, we shared with other people and showed them the opportunity but at the end, it wasn't God's best.

The analytical mind can draw a world of lessons out of this seemingly simple scenario and I can go on and on. But the Spirit of God specifically taught me two lessons from that experience. (a) The race is not to the swift. Fight the good fight, so that at the end, you yourself do not become an outcast in God's kingdom. (b) God always gives you a way out even when you have missed your chance. A lot of things cloud our thoughts that we fail to see God's plans for us and how they better our own plans. If I went straight to the stop by the gate, I would have got home a lot earlier than I did. But I got carried away with the excitement of the moment talking with friends; I forgot that wasn't necessarily the best position for me to get to my destination.

In all, I was glad that I still did what I did because if I had left for my correct Bus Stop immediately after the exams, I'd get home early but my pregnant friend may have waited for no les than 40 minutes at that stop for her bus without a guarantee that she'd still get on the bus considering the crowd and her indisposition.

Another lengthy one you'd say but it's worth sharing.

Catch y'all nex time and see you right there at the top! Drop a comment if this impacts you in any way...

Peace!

Tomorrow

You might be wondering, tomorrow...What about tomorrow? It seems a common word although you may not say the same when it comes to popularity or the frequency of its use as an article or speech title. I daresay about three quarter of you readers who think they either know or have read something similar before have not done so in reality. Understandably, we all most times find ourselves living in illusions or delusions wrapped in the figments of our imaginations.Pardon my jargons (if you identify any).

This piece is one of the posts in one of my “abandoned” sites mentioned in my maiden post in Eagle’s Eye. I managed to dig it out of my archive while I was trying to create a directory on my computer where I'd create an archive for my topics. I have done a bit of editing here and there but the content is still the same. I wrote the original post when I was still at Uni doing my postgrad. I guess I wrote it sometime around March 2007. Why have I chosen to post it on this page again? It just blends well with my line of thought in my last post. I find it quite timely because I am one of those people who have done themselves tremedous diservice by saying "I'll do it tomorrow". I will not give you "15 tips to help you stop procrastinating", "101 ways to be an action man" or any of such things but you'd agree that if you're engaged in anything which has not proved "profitable" (profit is relative), all you need is a change o attitude. You don't need a Compendium of rules and tips to change the situation. Before any of such rules and tips would work for you, you need one MAJOR ingredient, a change of attitude. It is only a fool who will do the same thing the same way over and again and expect different results. Read on.

Swallowed and wrapped up in the belly of academics, working on some assignments, I got bored and decided to wander about the internet. Something within me, maybe a feel of self-importance prompted me to type in my name on the search engine to see if I have gone "global"

Alas! The first link on the search results page catapulted me to this page (that was the site where I posted the original blog). Then I realised that night when I "stumbled" on this resource and started off with my blog titled "testing" (Testing, apparently was my first post on that blog). I quickly brushed through the last post and found out I said "I was coming" albeit not literally in that post. I remember vividly how in my mind I said to myself after the first post that “tomorrow; I'd come and add some more stuff to this page”. Hmmm... Immediately, the lesson struck me and I can see my whole life in flashes. The targets, the goals, the dreams of Yesterday, Yesterweeks, Yestermonths and even Yesteryears! Apparently, so many things have been left either undone or half-completed in like-manner - I'll come back to it later. Then a song came to my mind. One of the songs which one of my Indian friends at work taught. I’m not sure if I'd get the spellings and other rules of Hindi lexis and structure right but in my own tongue, singing the song literally the way she taught me I’ll attempt to write-sing it. Here you go; "O Femi, O Femi, O Femi...ripannadi, mapannadi, panikiradule O Femi..." don't ask me about the word-by-word meanings but the summary of the song is that "O ‘Femi (that’s my name in case you’re asking what/who is Femi?)...whatever you have to do today, do it and don't wait till tomorrow; O Femi... I wonder why she taught me that line of all the lines in Indian songs. And that inspired me to write this poem

Tomorrow

Tomorrow, the Yesterday of Today
Today, the Tomorrow of Yesterday
I long to see thee
Thou near future yet so far
Seeing me abandon today’s labour
I never knew my next neighbour
Thou art not, thou liveth far away


The craft man who longeth to see thee
Seeth never the fruit of his craft
The scholar who longeth for thee
Is caught in the web of “unpassedness”

Yesterday I longed by the moonlight
To tell my brood about thee
To invite thee for supper while by the fire
I tell the tale of how close thou once were
And how close thou’d always be
Alas, we lie in hope of thy sojourn
The candles waxed away and the fire needs kindling

Adorned with beauty untellable
In today I find succour and picked my tales
For the joy of my sweat
The wine of my vine
Locked in illusions trapped in thee
I’ve found with oil of gladness
For in Today thou art apparent and
In thy real self thou art but just an Illusion
©2007 Femi Olatunji


I hope someone somehow finds a lesson or better still draw an inspiration from this post. Well even if you don't, let my indian lyrics keep echoing in your mind and never lose the meaning summarised as well. While I do not take the credit for the song or its meaning, it is important to realise that was how she taught me - the lyrics (I may have incorrectly spelt the words) and the meaning. If you think the meaning otherwise, please feel free to drop me a comment.

Ciao!

The Value of Time

Guys, I'm posting a poem which I wrote sometime last year when we lost a dear brother in my fellowship. The title of the poem is actually "Could have been me". But I have decided not to adapt that same title to this post. However, the lesson remains clear; how precious time is and the need for anyone who wants to make a difference in their lifetime to ascribe to it the value it deserves. Before I post the poem, I just remembered a song which although has gone through several modification in its delivery by various artistes (The version I know and listen to is the one by Lynda Randle), we cannot ignore the veracity of its message. I guess you should read the chorus before I post my poem;

One day at a time sweet Jesus
That's all I'm asking from you
Just give me the strength
To do everyday what I have to do
Yesterday's gone sweet Jesus
And tomorrow may never be mine
Lord help me today show me the way
One day at a time.

"...Yesterday is gone sweet Jesus and tomorrow may never be mine...". You have an idea and you think you still have some time before you roll up your sleeves and get to business? Now is the time. You actually don't have as much time as you think you do. And I tell you what, I'm saying the same thing to myself. And here is the poem which I believe would make an impact in our lives in case we all have been caught up in the "sin" of procrastination. I call it a sin because to him that knoweth how to do good and doeth it not, it is a SIN! :) That which you have in your hands is enough to make a start...And now the poem :)

COULD HAVE BEEN ME…

Tell, how big can today’s troubles be
You never would know what this could mean
Till you understand how vain mortals could be
Life is kind, yet so mean
Tick! Tick!! Tick!!! Time’s gently ticking away

Yesterday’s gone. The past, that’s what it is
The dead past, leave to bury its own
For goals not met, whine not and never you hiss
Tomorrow’s not yours so never you moan
Tick! Tick!! Tick!!! So, remember time is ticking away

Life’s vanity we know but understand not you see?
‘Tis just human to crave for more day by day
Until when we all, and life someday would cease
When we shall be relieved of the troubles of every day
Oh yes, Tick! Tick!! Tick!!! Time moves on, without delay

Death is shamed, Uche died a hero
His passion for Christ to me was inspiring
His time with the father scored not a zero
But to think he’s gone just leaves me thinking
Tick! Tick!! Tick!!! Death’s head is bowed in shame

Behold the giants fall, son of God we cry for mercy
Teach us your grace for granted not to take
Tis not time for tears, dry we our eyes so we can see!
Arise! The enemy we’ve got to take
Cos tick! Tick!! Tick!!! Subtly the giants he’s come to take

Time is short, soldiers of Christ awake!
Stephen was gone and next was John
They sure would come for Peter we cannot wait
If we don’t take them on, tomorrow may be your turn
For Tick! Tick!! Tick!!! Time is ticking away

My head is bowed, my heart feels like steel
He was full of life yet for him death chose to come
The battle is won though his body lay still
We sorrow not for the will of God is done
Ah! Tick! Tick!! Tick!!!
I realised it could have been me…

(c) Femi Olatunji, 2007
Inspiration: The passing away of Dr. Uche Chukwu,Bedford, UK

Vision

Welcome to my blog page.

If I remember clearly, this is about the fourth blog page I have created. I have created some that I can’t even remember my log in details. Sometime in the past, I created a page on MySpace and posted beautiful blogs. But for some reasons, I developed cold feet.

Somehow, today while reflecting, my blogs crept into my thought and I realised I have not kept on with those “projects” because I didn’t have a focus. And in all honesty, it isn’t that I didn’t have a focus when I started those blogs but I’ll say my focus on each occasion was not CLEARLY defined. I didn’t have set objectives before I started them. I remember my first blog post. It was a beautiful poem from one of my collections. I was looking for a platform of expression after reading through my poems that beautiful evening and I decided to start a blog site. I did. But then I stumbled on another website; http://www.poetry.com/ and thought this would give my poems wider exposure. I never went back to my original baby.

There was a time I checked a friend’s blog site and was so moved by the kind of stuff he has on his site. Then I said to myself; “this is really cool. But I can actually do better…” The result? I immediately created a blog page which I can’t even remember the directory today. It died a natural death.

I used to be a campus journalist way back in my undergraduate years. Most of my articles which were privileged to be nominated for and/or win awards were mainly political. I spoke for the voiceless. Through my writings, I kept my course mates on their toes, nobody wanted to be picked upon in my next article. My articles covered every area of students’ lives on campus except Sports and Entertainment. One of my first blogs was supposed to be a continuity of my campus crusade. But I didn’t realise that the playground is now different. I failed to discover and define my new audience. Having talents is definitely not enough for success in any endeavour. I lost zeal after sometime and forgot I ever started the blog.

I have undertaken a number of projects in my short journey through life which I have not been able to sustain. And I’d say the chief reasons are because (1) I undertook some of those projects because I thought I could do better than somebody else without having my own dreams (2) I did not use the power of synergy and networking to achieve some of those dreams. I made myself an island (3) Each of my “abandoned projects” has been something ventured into for which I later realise I had ventured into something I have no iota of passion for. (4) I was not ready to take “major” risks. I was comfortable in my comfort zone.

I am a self-driven individual and believe so much in my ability to do and achieve anything I set my mind on. However, I realise that drive is just one of the tools needed for success. There is more than that if you ask achievers; they have a story to tell. They all have portfolios of toolkits that they keep adding to in their journey on the success ladder.

This time I have come to stay. My goals are clearly defined. So is my audience. I have identified the tools I need to carry on and can see my projected end already. My Vision is clear. More to come on success antidote in my next post.

Till then, Peace…