My Personal Letter to Job Seekers

" This piece was originally written as a note on my Facebook Page in July 15, 2011. Still a good read. Please read and share"

I woke up this morning thinking about a lot of things especially issues concerning the thousands if not millions of graduates hovering the streets in search of a job; most graduates spend half of their day in a cyber cafe blasting CVs and it could be frustrating that you hardly even get an invite. Most of the top jobs have been hijacked and the openings are just for formality's sake. Only the lucky ones are being picked from the 1-10 slots left open for the public. Considering this scenario, do you possibly think we can all be employed? Every quarter of the year thousands of youths leave the NYSC program, some get jobs ASAP (Those with longer legs) and the others join the already increasing number of jobless graduates. Youths are frustrated and most of them end up doing yahoo yahoo and for the ladies, they just take a trip to Abuja or Port Harcourt to hustle. Is this what we bargained for? After 4, 5, 6 years of

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How to Create a Product in China (And Make $100k in a Week on Kickstarter)

Last April I decided to take a trip to China and see what kinds of opportunities I could find for myself over there.

I had three potential markets in mind that I wanted to explore:

• Wood Watches
• Backpacks for the “flashpacker”
• Opportunities to import into China.

The one I was most excited about at the time were the watches.  My girlfriend Tate has a wooden watch that looks pretty cool, is a unique idea, and is a magnate for comments.  Everytime she wears it she gets at least 1 or 2 comments asking about it.

There was a ton of potential in the market, as few people had really started looking into opportunities with making watches out of wood.

I enlisted a couple friends of mine who knew more than I did about manufacturing and doing business in China, and headed to one of the world’s largest sourcing events: The Canton Fair.

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Start a Business on a Low Budget – Let Club080 Help You Today!

Do you want to start a business and don’t know how to go about it? Have you tried investing your money in several schemes and got ripped off? Are you on a low budget but want to start up something to keep you going? Guess what? You can start a business with as low as N10,000 and as high as N100,000. However, your earning potentials depend on how much you start with; as you already know in business world, that’s why the rich get richer! Sometimes, building a business from scratch could have its own problems, challenges, high level of risk and uncertainty. Leveraging on an already existing system is not a bad idea. Why do you think people invest in stocks? Good news is Club080 provides a platform for ‘would be entrepreneurs’ to start up their own business stress free.

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Dear Otondo, What Next After NYSC?

Last night I decided to write a letter to the ‘otondos’ of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. I got motivated to write this story after a jobless friend of mine received a phone call from another very fresh jobless friend; an otondo who had just left the NYSC camp, she was desperately begging for N200 recharge card. So I whispered to my friend, ‘does she realize you are jobless?’ My friend responded to her repulsively in these words ‘you just left camp, you should be the one sending me card, and don’t you have savings?’ Oh! Lest I forget, if you are non-Nigerian, Otondo is a name commonly used to qualify Nigerian graduates undergoing the one year compulsory National Youth Service Corp program, the intent of the program is to prepare the fresh graduates for job market.

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What We Wish We’d Known 5 Years Ago – 13 Successful Entrepreneurs

Five years ago I was re-doing my last year of high school, managing a retail store full-time and performing in a play five nights a week. Suffice to say I burned out pretty quickly and in hindsight I can see why.

Hindsight is a grand thing, but we don’t all go through the same experiences, so the hindsight of others can be beneficial to us as well. These 13 successful entrepreneurs and startupers have some great stories to tell, and I thought asking what they wish they knew five years ago would be a great way to find out what advice they have that could benefit us now.

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Tomi Davies: “What is the Nigerian dream?” and “Who was or will be the dreamer?”

To answer this question I did some thinking and it hit me that Nigeria’s founding fathers of which my old man was one actually did have a dream! It was encapsulated in the country’s original National Anthem (1960-1978) which I have paraphrased into the following prayer:

“Oh God of all creation grant this request that we build Nigeria our own dear native land into a nation where though tribe and tongue differ each generation stands in brotherhood to hand on to its children a sovereign Motherland where no man is oppressed”

Let me explain my thinking using some of the key words in the Anthem that leap to mind:

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17 Major Brands Doing Business Along Yaba – Tejuosho – Ojuelegba Axis

Once you alight from the ever-in-motion-public-transport popularly called ‘danfo’ & your eyes sets on a unique circular structure at an intersection….– a concrete structure with a molded traditional hat & reading glasses (symbol of Bola Ahmed Tinubu – Former Lagos State Governor) atop of it, depicting a ’roundabout’ – you need not be told where you are or what to expect.

You have just gotten to the last bus stop of Yaba/Tejuosho market.

The first thought that flashes across your mind is that of you entering a hostile environment. That weird feeling that you are ‘behind enemy lines’ grips you.

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