In late 2007, I had a setback when I broke a fundamental rule which I’ve summed up as:
“Never stop marketing. Not even when business is so good that you’re over booked!”
Ignoring this is often what causes the feast-famine cycle many people pass through! In this issue of my newsletter, I use a true personal story to explain why this is so, and what you can do.
SCROLL DOWN TO READ FULL ISSUE
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Too many people claim to do Self-Development, when what they do is mostly wishful thinking, with little or NO ACTION TAKING! The ideas I offer will help you practice results-focused Self-Development that yields tangible benefits!
Don’t rush like others to acquire the latest certification unless you’re sure it can really help you improve. Don’t feel inferior to another person for any reason – especially not because he has an MBA when you only have an M.sc.
Ask yourself: Do I really need this qualification to get ahead in my job/life – now or in the future?
There are people who have done similar things to what you wish to achieve in their time, and who have chosen to write about how they did it. Make them your role models – use their methods or modify to suit your self/purpose.
Ask yourself who you work with that you have no idea what he does. Begin to show interest in understanding what your co-workers or subordinates do and how they do it. You WILL learn a lot and MIGHT have some useful ideas on improvement to pass on to them. And of course the personal interest you show in their work will do a lot to boost their morale.
Show interest in other parts of the business for instance. Be interested in knowing how the production department did last week, what their problems were and how they resolved them. Before long you’ll begin to sound like you actually know a bit about what goes on there.
Better still; the department’s members may begin to see you in a more positive light.
At a point, managers not as close to Production as you are, may begin to regard you as a reliable source of information about that department.
Don’t be fooled – all these will be noticed/eventually filter to the decision-makers at the top and they will take note of it for the future.
Build a personal library. Buy books that teach you what you want to know. Apply what you learn from the books.
Always seek ways to improve the way things are done. Never avoid problems. Problems are challenges that present us with an opportunity to learn “a little more” (in addition to what we already know) by trying to solve them.
Be reflective. I do not mean that you should “worry”. Start doing the little things that others never seem to think matter. You must have depth. People who come to you should come away feeling that you have a lot to offer them.
They should feel that you have revealed something new about what they thought they knew to them. Others will enjoy working with you because they will get nourishment from you.
Never be superficial. Never lose interest in detail. It might appear fashionable, but it can be quite costly too.
To put it another way, never leave ANY job unfinished. You can delay or put off a job you started, but ensure you go back and finish it. It does not pay to have someone else come around to discover you did not do a complete job, when you had NO reason not to!
Your integrity automatically gets called to question…not good!
There are two sides to a coin – what you see depends on which side of the coin (the situation) you choose to look at. Do not fear failure – use it as a stepping stone instead.
Always try to be in the thick of the action. Be ready to take risks.
Some people will tell you to avoid being too out in the open, but you will gain absolutely nothing by doing nothing. Confidence only comes from doing. Only when you have been a member of a problem-solving or project team, do you begin to understand how such a team works, what they do etc.
This immediately takes away whatever fears you had about being in such team when next the issue comes up. The knowledge/skill you pick up in the process will eventually serve you well if you get re-deployed or seconded in the future to an area where it becomes useful.
Free yourself from the discouraging limitations that naysayers may try to impose on you. That it has never been done before – or that they tried it and it did not work – does not mean you cannot do it.
What’s the point of saying “it’s been tried before and it did not work” anyway? We learn nothing by giving up! Conversely, we learn a lot by persevering through determination till we succeed.
Ask those who have been there and done it before, then modify what you learn to suit the present situation.
Use the Internet to see what is available that might be of use. The Internet is filled with various tools and resources put online by generous minded individuals and groups with a view to ensuring they make it easier for others across the world to do solve their problems quicker and more efficiently.
If you use it intelligently, you will find that you save yourself many hours of work and become more efficient and effective in the process.
If you practice “Deliberate, Performance Enhancing” Self-Development, those around you WILL notice a major difference.
And they will eventually acknowledge you for it.
If that does NOT happen, there’s a good chance you are NOT doing it right – in which case, re-reading and diligently acting on – the 12 tips offered in this article may be what you need!
Let me know you want to signup for my coaching, usingthis contact form – click!
Who are you taking advice from in your business or personal life? Every day in Nigeria, and I am sure all over the world as well, people find themselves on the receiving end of advice from speakers, writers, presenters etc. On radio, TV, newspapers, the web, tons of advices are offered by (mostly) well meaning "experts".
But I cannot help periodically wondering about where some of those I hear dish out advice – especially about how to succeed IN NIGERIA – get their ideas from!
Why? Simple: We are a nation of MANIPULATORS . We do not believe in following laid down guidelines to achieving a set goal. We are not prepared to nurture ourselves to develop needed competencies to achieve success. We always want to have an unfair advantage – to win, no matter how.
That’s why for instance, we got found out to be AGE cheats in the FIFA age group competitions. For instance, towards the 2009 U-17 world cup, the country had to endure the embarrassment of being told the tests conducted on our selected team members revealed about 18 of them were over aged!
And that was NOT a one-off occurrence. It goes way back.
I say this because I played active competitive handball from school to state level for over 10 years (1983 to 1993), and during that time, I found myself in age group teams playing alongside individuals MUCH older than the maximum allowed age limits.
One example. Following my performance in the 1985 Kwara secondary schools state Handball competition finals, I was invited to join the Kwara state team in camp for the 1985 National Sports Festival. Towards the start of the competition, the coach asked each player for his age.
When I told him I was 15, he retorted "No, I mean what is your REAL age?".
Before I could respond, some of my team mates told him, "Coach, that’s his real age". The man looked me over in surprise, apparently because he thought my 5ft 11inches height suggested I would be older than that.
The intention, as I would later learn, was to find out how far above the 18 year maximum age limit I was, so he could tell me what under-18 "official" age he would put on the team list to be submitted .
I will also NOT forget how (in 1983, I think) I got dropped from the state team that went to the World Youth Championships in Sweden and Denmark. This was because the coach saw me in the line up for pictures to be taken for use in preparing our international passports, and pulled me out, saying "Ah, you are too tall".
I got replaced by a colleague who was smaller in stature, even though older than I was!
I look back now, and realise that THAT was (probably) why 3 Nigerian state teams kept winning those World Youth Handball competitions (sweeping first, second and third positions annually!) back then. We were fielding over aged players, who naturally over ran their much younger counterparts from other countries!
It is against the back drop of all this that I wonder where all our wonderful "advice-givers" get their ideas from.
For heaven’s sake, how can anyone tell young Nigerians to DARE TO DREAM, when almost EVERYTHING in this society TELLS them VERY often, it’s not how good you are, that determines if you get what you want in life HERE in
Nigeria.
Instead, it is – among others things:
(a) where you are from in the country
(b) who you know in a position of influence
(c) how much money you have
(d) how much of what you
have you are willing to give up, no matter how unfair that may be to YOU.
All this happened in an economy where struggling business owners repeatedly have their bank loan applications turned down! Isn’t it just amazing?!
Yet, these same MDs before their exposure had been variously invited as guest speakers to "advise" the rest of us at different times on our finances – and even on the subject of "success".
If only we had known what they were doing behind closed doors, we would have been wiser. Some of us would probably not have lost so much money trading their "manipulated" stocks in the stock exchange for instance!
I respond by asking: what good has sweeping our bad habits under the carpet done us so far? What good has our unwillingness to bring unpleasant issues that retard our progress on the table for discussion brought us? Today, things are even WORSE than ever!
I do NOT believe turning a blind eye to wrong doing will yield any positive long term benefits for anyone – EXCEPT of course the perpetrators.
Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Gana Fawehimni (both now late) and Wole Soyinka are the PRACTICAL role models I can relate with. It is their example I will gladly follow.
They do not even spare their presidents
, when the need for corrective feedback is identified.Ask Bill Clinton – who had to endure having the minutest details of his affairs x-rayed on TV, the web, radio and all other media for many months as his case with Monica Lewinsky progressed. Why can’t we copy America in this area – the way we ape them in their fashion, music etc?
You see, I believe we have other more useful lessons we can learn from the Americans, but we choose NOT to see them, because we are INSINCERE. That is also why we do not progress. American speakers, authors, radio/TV presenters etc can rightly tell their citizens in America to DARE TO DREAM.
This is because their society has in it, people (and systems) that will ALLOW those who are BEST qualified, those with proven competence, to WIN.
When we invite them to Nigeria, to speak to our people about achieving similar results, we must be prepared to CREATE an environment similar to that which the Americans have created for success to become a WAY OF LIFE.
Take it from me, there are among us for instance, "success coaches" who speak and write about being able to weather hard times or adversity, but who will cave in, and compromise on all fronts, at the slightest sign that tough times are headed their way.
I have met them in large numbers out here.
And they are the ones usually most visible and available to offer advice to the rest of us in society.
As an expert-who-speaks (or writes), the topic, subject, or theme you choose to focus on can be a crucial determinant of your success.
If your audience loves it, you’ll become a “hero” who demystifies it for them. Otherwise, you may get largely ignored…until you can do better.
SCROLL DOWN TO READ FULL ISSUE
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
On Wednesday 27th August 2014, my 3 sons (11, 13, and 15 respectively), as part of my Personal Achievement Coaching for Kids (PACK)™ project, went on their first ever “sales calls”: Finding Buyers for their Pineapple Flavored Cakes Baked Without Oven.
[Note: (a). PMA = Positive Mental Attitude (b). Click here to download PDF preview of the kids project).
I believe, from over a decade as an entrepreneur, that a crucial ingredient for achieving success in life, in spite of adversity is a mental attitude that can deal with failure and rejection.
That mental attitude is rarely something most people are born with. Majority will have to develop it.
History confirms that this is true. I won’t bother to give you instances. Go read about some of the greatest achievers known even today, who achieved entrepreneurial success. You’ll see that many had stints (or even major careers) in Sales.
3 well known examples are Robert Kiyosaki, Brian Tracy, the late, great Zig Ziglar. I’m sure you can think of a few yourself!
The above as well as my experiences convince me young people will do better in adulthood, if they are deliberately made to develop their “selling skills”, in real life situations.
I taught them the production methods, and “pushed them” to try selling them to friends, back in September 2013 (click here to see photos of their past efforts). So, it’s not like I’m blaming them
But like I told them, it’s much easier to sell to people who know you. Their friends in school readily trusted their product and bought the cakes, without being too critical.
Unfortunately, you cannot know enough people so well, to not have to sell to those you do not know. In other words, you will still need to sell to strangers, if you want to make enough money.
During the 2 sales visits they made, they got a good taste of what it felt like to do cold calls i.e. to try selling to total strangers.
Now they know that they need to have ready answers to questions and objections prospects would raise, which could lead to rejections.
One example:
[Pssst…here’s a little secret: What they did not know was that I’d visited the chap yesterday, after taking a walk around, and introduced myself, asking if he would be willing to help me with a “Social Experiment”.
Then I explained about the project my kids are engaged in, and how I needed them to experience having to answer questions from prospective buyers NOT as trusting, and ready to “buy” (no matter how cheap) as their school mates.
He agreed, saying he felt it was a great experience I was giving the kids and that he’d recently told a friend more people needed to think of starting micro businesses, rather than look for jobs. We then exchanged phone numbers, and I returned home.
From what the kids have told me, the chap really played his role well. Read on to see what I mean…]
They replied that it was because they preferred it (Which was a wrong answer…not what I told them. But the “pressure” made them forget).
He then asked if they did not think it would take less effort and time (and be more hygienic) if they used a Gas Oven.
The 15 year old, who was the “lead salesperson” and who had been answering up till that point, said he had no answer to that question.
At this point they gave him the flyers they brought with them, and he then told them it was good they had created a product concept of their own. The he explained about the business he did to them, and how he was trying to grow it.
It goes without saying that I KNOW Gas and Electric ovens can be used to bake cakes!
Incidentally, the kids today Friday 29th August 2014, baked a new set of cakes using the gas oven in their Grandparent’s home where they are on holiday.
So, I’m not stopping them from using that method (I should mention that failed to thoroughly mix the butter and sugar, leading to out of shape cakes. But their Grandparents kindly bought some of the funny shaped cakes off them…another lesson!)
However, my vision is to address the issue of “I have no capital” as practically as possible – to the point of eliminating ANY excuses ANYONE may have, about starting a micro business.
Too many people in my part of the world – even adults, and especially young people/teenagers – will readily tell you MONEY (as little as N1,000!) is keeping them from starting something they can use to earn a living.
It’s an answer that smart thinking, profit-focused business owners will readily give to such a question!
One of the ways I learnt that answer was from watching Top Management in Guinness Nigeria Plc. They got all of us – the employees – to break brewing and bottling records by TASKING us to use (what we thought were spent) machines/plant s in the breweries.
In other words, it will often not be about how new or sophisticated your tools and equipment are.
Instead, what matters will be how effectively you are able to use whatever resources you have, to produce products that meet the desired standards!!!!
It’s simple common sense.
And this approach ensures that they kids get a sound understanding of the basic principles involved in the process.
Now that I’ve explained it to my kids, I know they’ll be able to respond competently/convincingly to future buyers who ask them why they use the Charcoal Stove method.
[NB: By way of interest, after they told me how the first sales visit went, I sent them back out to do the next visit. This time it was to the shop of the woman from whom they had often purchased the flour, sugar and other materials for cake baking.
They had all GROANED loudly…but trooped out to do it. They made no sale from that outing either, but they came back with details of how they answered the questions they were asked. ]
I’d told them they could walk around the neighborhood to explore possible places where buyers could be found for their cakes. So, they’d done that and eventually decided to sit with the mallam selling provisions in the estate, who happens to be their friend (they buy biscuits, sweets, Indomie noodles and other goodies from him).
They displayed their box wrapped cakes on the mallam’s stand, and began chatting away. At a point, a lady resident in the estate made a purchase from the mallam, and he had was lacking change to give her.
She suddenly pointed at their cakes and asked how much they were. The boys promptly replied that each box of 2 was N100.
The lady picked up a box, asking the mallam to use her N100 change to pay the boys. Before she left she asked them questions about how they made the cakes etc. And she also wanted to know what the name of the company was.
Now, that last question they had no answer to – as we have yet to decide what “business name” to register for this family business.
From the above, you can see that the kids already made a sale before the went out on the formal sales visit I setup. The only thing was it was an accidental one.
However, that accidental sale also proves that one intelligent way to make sales will be to have fixed location where people can find you/your products e.g. a shop.
We will be opening one when the time is right, in Cotonou. For now, I want them to experience cold calling, and pavement pounding, so as to be able to compare and contrast, while building the character needed for lasting success: persistence!
This is the first leg in the journey.It is a program I know will benefit any young person who is willing to learn. And I intend to use it to empower my kids to do a better job of succeeding in the real world than I did at their age.
I offer to help other kids do the same. Including YOURS, if you let me!
Plus, I offer special coaching support for parents who want to learn how to do the same for their kids. Including you, if you’re willing!
If you believe you (or your child) can benefit from my program, fill and submit this form, for details of how to get started.
Before you excitedly email those pictures to your contacts, do them the favour of reducing the image file sizes (via web optimisation) in a graphics software. Owners or employees in fields like real estate and entertainment, often have to send digital camera, or scanned images (e.g of contracts) to contacts via email.
For instance:
(1). His/her email inbox gets clogged because pixs attached to your email are huge.
(2). Even where s/he has access to unlimited email storage, time required to view EACH image may still turn off the recepient..
Web users are not patient people plus, and NOT everyone uses broadband! If you’re in business in my part of the world, you will be wise to take this into consideration when reaching out to clients and prospects with your images.
I wrote this article-tutorial back on 3rd September 2007, to offer some ideas.
However, I encourage you to explore additional options that are now available- including web based services that make it possible to reduce your file sizes online within a matter of seconds.
In case you are unfamiliar with the subject of graphic file formats, I provide brief descriptions of the three main graphic file formats used on the web, and which I have mentioned at least once in the body of this article:
a). JPEG means "Joint Photographic Experts Group" : useful for displaying "photographic or continuous tone" images.
b). GIF means "Graphic Interchange Format" : useful for displaying images with large areas of flat colours(e.g logos, icons, and navigation buttons).
c). PNG means "Portable Network Group": An improved replacement format for GIF.
1. Load the graphics editing software on your PC (If you have none, ask around for advice from people who know, about which one to buy – and where . It won’t take you long to find someone who can help).
Note: in this example, I use Adobe Photoshop 7.0.
2. Click "File-Open" in Adobe Photoshop, then use the "Open" dialog box that appears, to navigate to the folder/location of the image(s) you wish to optimise.
I call it up into Photoshop using steps 1 and 2 above.
3. Once it opens, I click "File-Save For Web…" on the main menu and a "Save For Web" dialog interface appears.
4. Looking at the "Settings" panel to the top right, I notice that the JPEG setting (which can be any one of four possible settings for "desired image quality" namely: Low, Medium, High & maximum) is currently set to "Maximum".
A display on the bottom left of the image reads "JPEG (indicating the image’s file format), 1.653M (indicating the displayed image’s size), 603 sec @ 28.8Kbps (indicating estimated image download/view time at 28.8 kilobyte per sec internet connection speed).
You need to understand graphic file formats to do this right.
To learn the difference between the different graphic file formats and when it is best to use each one, press F1 in photoshop and click "search" on the browser based help interface that appears, then type "About file formats", and click "Search".
The results page that appears to the right offers – among other things – links to explanations about different file formats. Also there is a link that leads to information about "choosing a Web optimization format".
Explore the links and you should soon be familiar with why JPEG is often the preferred format for web optimisation of photographic images etc.
NB: Another way to learn about the different graphic file formats (such as JPEG, GIF, and PNG) and when best to use EACH is to do a search on the web.
5. Next I click the graphic file formats selection drop menu and choose "Medium". The interface soon changes, and the resulting image display quality still looks acceptable. So I check the bottom left display which now reads: "JPEG (for image format), 339.9KB (for the optimised image’s size), 133 sec @ 28.8Kbps (for the optimised image’s download time at 28.8 kilobyte per sec internet connection speed).
Now imagine if I had six(6) such files to email to my friends. Rather than slam their mail boxes with 10.8 MB worth of picture attachments, they will only have to contend with approximately six files totalling 2 MB altogether(!) – each of which would take about 122 secs to download at 28.8kbps. But it’s actually likely to be BETTER than that because in reality, the simplest/most basic net connections today run at 56kbps and higher, so that it would actually take 60 seconds or less to view the optimised images!
6. Next I click the "Save" button to accept the optimised image. Then I navigate to the desktop using the "Save Optimised As" dialog box drop menu, and add "_optimised" to the default filename of the image.
Next, I click "Save" to store the new image to the desktop, where I will later find it and send it as an email attachment to an acquaintance for his comments.
Note that not only does the optimised image look almost (if not just as) clear as the original, it also has the exact same dimensions, so nothing really is lost – at least to the human eye, which is the benefit of the lossy compression format called "JPEG".
Many people come online in a bid to quickly check their mails or find some information or upload some data etc. Quite often, this causes them to have little time or patience to "WAIT" for top- heavy web pages or "fat" images to download.
As a result they tend to be "click-happy" – and if your pictures take too long to appear – could "click away " to do other more pressing things (possibly promising themselves they will come back another time to view the lovely pictures – but often "forgetting" to do so).
If you really want people to take time to look at the pictures you send to their email boxes, make the extra effort to optimise those pictures(using any good graphics application) for quick/easy display on the web.
Play around with with your program a bit, read up the instructions provided in the Help section, and you should soon be up to speed with making your pictures/images web optimised AND viewer-friendly 
This article was first published on this blog 3 months ago, on Friday 23rd May 2014 (see browser history screenshot below). Today, when I tried linking to it, to post a comment on Facebook, I got a “Page Not Found” error on my blog. A MySQL database check soon revealed it was GONE: “Yepa!”!
But I suspect no foul play. It’s quite likely it “got lost” during the back and forth cross-database updates from my old to new hosts following the loss of Spontaneousdevelopment.com (my former, 9 year old domain name).
Whatever the case, here’s the FULL article republished.
Punch Newspaper Headline (27th Aug. 2014): Fraudsters shop abroad with cloned Nigerian ATM cards
This is not the first such headline I have seen. When I saw one for the first time few days after arriving Lagos, from Cotonou (2 weeks ago), I found report headlines like the above hard to comprehend.
But now it’s all starting to make sense.
For fraudsters to successfully clone ATM cards, they will need insider help. And my recent personal experience equips me to piece together key parts of the puzzle…
This is why despite picking up my new ATM/debit card on arriving Nigeria about 2 weeks ago, I’ve been VERY reluctant to put it to use for my international web hosting and other payments online.
You see, just few months ago, the previous (now expired) card from the same bank, which I’d actively used without issues for 3+ years mysteriously got hacked and an attempt was made to use it for shopping by one “Rabbi” in “New York”.
Luckily, the card was not directly linked to an account that had enough funds to cover the transaction. That was a due diligence precaution I’d proactively taken earlier in the year.
But these guys were persistent (and wretched!) as they kept reducing the amount charged to the card, till they took out the less than $13 USD balance left over in the linked account from the last domain name registration and web hosting payments I’d funded it for.
I never understood how my card got compromised, and my bank also had no answer. So I waited for my card to expire – and it did on 31st July 2014. Since then, I’ve been too wary to start using the new one!
Then I came back here (Lagos) and began reading newspaper reports claiming some bank staff have been implicated in using customer cards online…and I told myself: EUREKA!
See article I wrote to warn/alert others to the potential danger:
===Now go on and read below===
If you use a debit/credit cards, you may want to read about this experience I had within the last 24 hours. Why? Because doing so could just help you avoid leaving yourself open to having someone drain out your bank account!
I spent yesterday morning corresponding via phone and email with my bank in Nigeria…
They began by applying a charge of $218 fee to my GTB MasterCard.
Since I use a Blackberry, I saw the alert announcing “Transaction Declined due to Insufficient funding” as soon as it came in.
Luckily for me, the account linked to the card (which is the one I also use to make payment for hosting renewal etc) is one that I keep almost at NIL balance.
I chose to do this based on past experience when I inadvertently let my Skype subscription autorenew when I did not need it.
Otherwise, that attempt would have gone through – and these crooks would have gotten away with it.
We agreed that I would continue what I’d doing, by keeping funds NIL until I need to use it, then once loaded I make payment to return it to NIL status.
That way, the fraudster would stand no chance of getting funds out if they try again.
As explained above the first attempt (for $218 USD) did not got through.
After discussing with the account officer who called me from Nigeria yesterday, the crafty guys charged $9.51 and then $5 USD overnight (between 2 a.m and 5a.m) successfully!
You see, I did not know my last online payment had left a balance that much, otherwise I woudl have spent it.
Normally I try hard to use up any balance to the barest minimum by loading funds to a reseller account I run for my web hosting service. But my exchange rate calculation for $50 USD equivalent was off, and I ended up leaving some funds behind, that the guys took out.
They must have kept lowering the applied charge all night or soemthing, until it went through.
Each alert I got, I sent an email to the bank, requesting that they do a reversal.
The problem is that I have 2 web hosting clients I need to do renewals for in July.
A new debit card may not be ready for me to use before then.
So after thinking about it, I’ve decided I’ll pursue one of 2 options:
a. Continue with my strategy of keeping my balance close to NIL, until I need to make payment, then fund it and use up at once.
b. From discussions I had with a banker friend, I can purchase a virtual Mastercard I can make use of on a one-off basis.
The second option appeals to me more.
Interestingly, I used to do that about 8 years ago. And it was always a much safer way to spend online. I guess I should thank the fraudsters for pushing me to THINK of a better way!
I’ve always tried to be very careful these past 4 years of using it.
I’m not sure if this was done by Nigerian fraudsters or not. But the location on the transaction notices has been in the USA.
It would be better to be safe than sorry. I never imagined this could happen to me, and it has. Plus, I found out nothing could really be done short of disabling my card. In other words, even your Nigerian bank cannot help you.
Compare the case of my brother in law who lives in the UK. He simply told his credit card company to back charge or reverse the charge when it recently happened to him.
But that did not mean he would not be able to use his card anymore. Or that he would have to pay to get a new one!
Which is what my bank in Nigeria has told me. Not very helpful is it…!
So, if you’re in Nigeria, or using a Nigerian bank’s card for online payments, it would be safter to AVOID this kind of problem altogether, by not letting it happen in the first place.
Please pass this on!
This new personal philosophy paper offers download access to four (4) useful PDF documents I recently created using videos, audios or informal “writing” originated by competent experts I reckon with. They are Efe Ohwofasa (UK), Patrick Meninga (USA), Richie Parker (USA) and Charles Ayo Dada (Nigeria).
A. Breakthrough to Purpose – Andy Brine Interviews Efe Ohwofasa – Video
B. Ten (10) Valuable Lessons I Learnt About Blogging for Passive Income, from Yaro Starak’s 60 Minute Podcast Interview with Patrick Meninga
C. NEVER Let Anyone Tell You What YOU Cannot Do! (Transcript Slideshow Version of ESPN’s July 21 “SportsCenter” Profile video about Richie Parker – the engineer born without arms, who designs championship winning NASCAR race car parts/components)
D. HOW I MADE MY FIRST MILLION AS A WRITER SELLING BOOKS…(A True Story About Potentially Traumatizing Sales & Marketing Dilemmas Book Authors Face in Nigeria) – narrated in a post by award winning writer – Charles Ayo Dadaon his Facebook wall on 18th August 2014.
If the link fails, you can contact Charles via Facebook (www.facebook.com/charles.a.dada) for a copy.
Alternatively, you can email tayo at tksola dot com and I’ll email it to you as a PDF attachment.
Why do I go out of my way to create these kinds of elaborate resources without being asked, and without seeking ANY kind of remuneration?
Is it to get publicity, or to get those I feature to notice me and give me jobs? What is my real motive?
That’s why I call myself a Self-Development/Performance Enhancement Specialist & Multipreneur.
I have a passion that has endured for over 20 years (right from my days as a student in the University, through my time as a high flying employee in Guinness Nigeria).
Due to my versatility, and quick learning ability, I have over the years proven myself to be a valuable addition to the arsenal of any group or organisation.
So many people find me to be a useful resource because my active search for practical information about what works enables me add value to them.
Anywhere I go, whatever I see or read, my natural instinct is always to find ways to share it with others to help them improve their performance.
I’m the kind of person who cannot help HELPING others. I am naturally driven to be a catalyst. No matter who I interact with, I create the impression of increase.
Most of my clients often get much more measurable value from interacting with me, than they pay for.
I work this way not because I want to be Pope, or because I’m a priest. I do so because I LOVE to see people make the best use of their God-given abilities to achieve their fullest potential.
NO MATTER what challenges they have to confront and overcome in life. And that is why I pick on videos and presentations of authentic achievers, whose messages convince me they are who they say they are.
Due to the challenges of poor connectivity in my part of the world, I realise many who desire to benefit from the wonderful video and audio presentations available online may not get ready access to them – except via text transcripts like those I create.
Tomorrow – Wednesday 27th August 2014 will be a BIG day for my 3 boys (9, 13, and 15 respectively). As part of my Personal Achievement Coaching for Kids (PACK)™ project, during their holidays, they now embark on “sales calls” to develop their selling skills, and learn to deal with rejection.
My kids have been making and selling these Pineapple peel based drinks and cakes since I taught them the production methods, and “pushed them” to try selling them to friends, in September 2013.
It soon occurred to me that this is a good formula for a micro business that anyone can start with very little money: Waste fruit peels as a zero cost key ingredient for easily reproducible low cost drinks and cake making! They sell these products to school mates, during break time.
In it, those they approach are requested to engage them by asking questions about the product and making them defend it, justify their price etc.
I am sharing this in the hope that others may feel encouraged to organize a similar project to EMPOWER THEIR OWN kids. – Tayo K. Solagbade, Lagos-Nigeria | 26th August 2014.
“There’s a world outside school that your child must be ready for, if she is to succeed. Because you arrived in it, before her, YOU are an expert in it, compared to her. If you truly love your child therefore, you can – and should – share YOUR EXPERTISE about succeeding in the world, to help her learn how to EXCEL in it. This book uses narratives of true life childhood experiences of a brilliant but wayward child, who later reformed himself, as a basis for offering practical tips and insights you can use. Don’t. I repeat: DO NOT…leave that role for her teachers to play, because they will seldom be able to do enough, compared to YOU!” – Tayo K. Solagbade | Best Practice Parenting Advocate™ & Location Independent Performance Improvement – Author of “KUKURU DANGER™ – 5 True Stories About the Adventures – & Misadventures! – of a School Age Child Trying to Find Purpose in Life”. Download a FREE 20 page PDF preview of the book fromwww.tayosolagbade.com/buy-kukuru.htm
I am not sure how many of you on my mailing list know what it feels like to endure YEARS of VERY erratic power supply on a daily basis from your country’s power company.
That’s what Nigerians in Nigeria endure daily.
During my visits to Ghana (in 2005) and Cameroon (in 1999 and 2001) most people did not believe that in Nigeria, a person may go WEEKS without power – even as his neighbor continues having it!
SCROLL DOWN TO READ FULL ISSUE
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
