From sleeping on the streets of Cotonou and Porto-Novo in Benin Republic for about 2 of my first 4 weeks in Cotonou (after relocating on 1st April 2013), I went on several months later to:
A. Win a diplomat in the Nigerian Embassy as a client who:
1. Engaged me to build a website for his farm business based in Iludun, Ekiti state, in Southwest Nigeria.
2. Provided me accomodation in his official residence – for 3 solid weeks.
3. Arranged for his driver to take me down to his Farm in Southwest Nigeria (3 different times) – click photo below to view actual Facebook post from September 2013 – to install my Excel-VB poultry Farm Manager software on his farm, and coach his Farm Manager (and young relative of his – a graduate of agriculture in her early 30s) on how to use it.
B. Get contacted by a European Union Funded NGO: who went on to pay me 2,500 Euros for writing (at their request) a Case Study paper about my Excel-VB Ration Formulator and how it was being purchased and used by Farm CEOs in and out of Africa.
Using funds I’d earned from him and other payments I had begun receiving for my digital products and services (even locally), I moved out of the diplomat’s residence after 3 weeks and rented a face-me-I-face-you single room apartment in Cotonou.
Then I continued my relentlessly focused online marketing to generate more search engine based sales leads…
By January 2014, I’d gotten paid 2,500 Euros by CTA.int for the international Case Study paper they commissioned me to write about how my Excel-VB Ration Formulator was being purchased and used by Farm CEOs in and out of Africa.
They contacted me in September 2013 [Read: No. 119: How to Achieve Success in Any Field (True Story)]
By mid-2014, I was able to spend about N287k (money from payments recived from buyers of my Excel-VB Ration Formulator Software, Feed Formulation Handbook and Poultry Farm Manager Software) to rent a lovely 2 bedroom “sanitaire” apartment in “Aibaten” (Click here or image below to view article showing photos of it) – and moved in with a few furniture items.
My plan to return to Nigeria and move my family to join me there (which I actually announced on my blog and Facebook!) however failed when my spouse did an about face, having previously agreed that I should go pay for the place.
After waiting in Nigeria for over 2 months pleading for her to change her mind, I was forced to return to Cotonou to inform my Landlady I no longer needed such a big space to live in.
I lost over 60% of the money (to cover the rental period I’d been the occupant, and also utilities bills), but true to her real estate agent’s word, the balance I had left was refunded to me in full.
This totally unexpected development really set me back considerably, as I had to return to spending on hotel accommodation. But I survived and my growing earnings helped me keep going.
Today, the online marketing based income earning generation system I was able to establish using 24/7 access to electricity in Benin continues to serve me well, enabling me to live my dream working as a Location Independent Multipreneur/Digital Nomad.
Now that I have almost sorted out – via permanent separation – the negative impact of periodic domestic abuse on the home front, after my return to Lagos, which kept causing me problems delivering some client projects, I am achieving sustainable progress in my work.
My earnings are proof of it. (FYI: You can watch my 1st November 2020 IG LIVE Interview with Coordinator, Lagos State Domestic & Sexual Violence Response Team – DSVRT – Coordinator here – and/or get the video to text PDF transcript here).
Soon, I will resume traveling again and commence video interviews to promote my brand even further via my YouTube channel.
QUESTION: But how did I go from struggling to feed, and sleeping on the streets in Benin Republic, to (a) winning a Nigerian diplomat as client who gave me a room, and a driver to take me to his Farm in Nigeria (b) getting paid 2,500 Euros by a European Union Funded NGO based in Holland to write a 4,000 word Case Study Paper about my Excel-VB Ration Formulator software ???
The full story of the actions I took, and especially the mental attitude I maintained – which continues to help me defeat adversity in various shapes and forms today – will be told in an Audio Podcast True Story Narration I will be posting in my YouTube channel soon.
To get notified when it goes LIVE, send your email address and WhatsApp number to me via +234-803-302-1263 with the phrase “Send me the ‘Streets-to-Success’ Podcast”. Alternatively, fill/submit this web marketing form.