This thing called entrepreneurship

Most people see the glam pictures when you are holding a microphone and speaking at some summit or some conference, or when you are hobnobbing with big men and famous people and think entrepreneurship is some kind of funny dance where all you do is write motivational stories and be an all around nice person.

Entrepreneurs are crazy people. Let me share my story of crazy:

On 21st March 2013 (I remember because it was the day Chinua Achebe died), I couldn’t get a flight from Lagos to Asaba so I went by road. Upon reaching Asaba I sat on an Okada and crossed the Niger River, with my laptop in a bag on my laps while zipping through 18 wheeler articulated trucks.

It then hit me as the bike was jumping along and I was inhaling the musky smell of the rider’s armpits in broad daylight that if I fell from the bike that day, my brains spilling from my skull will probably be the last memorable image people will see.

I met a client from Abia who came to meet me in front of the Onitsha market, after which I took another car to Owerri. Right in the middle of Ibo Heartland, and all I could speak was Ghana pidgin, in a part of the country where there were absolutely no friends.

The next week I went to Jos, where every 500 meters was a military roadblock that had soldiers armed to the teeth, and there was sectarian violence between Christians and Muslims. The day before, people had been shot. The day after I left, a number of houses got burnt in violence. I went there and made my presentation.

Once when on the Sagamu road, we were stopped by some police vigilante type guys with sawed off shotguns in the bush, who kept waving their guns at me and asking if I wasn’t an armed robber.

I have been to places where I couldn’t speak a word of any local language, where I had to eat foods I never knew about, talk to people I might never meet again, shared seats with strangers I might never meet. All for the hustle, all to get the client, all to spread your market.

Some will hawk, some will do crazy things, some will even get hurt and arrested, rightfully or wrongly. But the life of a businessman in West Africa isn’t all about an air-conditioned office and an Apple MacBook.

At the end of the day, the degree you have and your academic qualifications are not tattooed on your forehead. Even if they were, people will care less.

Those who know the grind will tell you that the degrees you got on the corridors of KNUST, UGBS, Stanford or Yale mean nothing to Kwame Despite, Adonko Bitters or A1 bread.

What matters is whether your product is important and adds value, and what you do about your product, whether selling or creating or evolving the product to meet your clients’ needs, and whether that MBA or degree adds value in how the products are presented and packaged to the class of clients who are your target market.

Then you have to do things like compliance, ensuring that you have all the requisite papers to do business, win tenders, do audits, pay workers, pay bills, pay duty and spend money on stuff when your own family is hungry.

Entrepreneurship isn’t for the fainthearted. You have to be ready to grind with the truck pusher and sip champagne with the Finance Minister. Most of the time, you will be loading things on the truck pushers truck and helping him push the truck in the hot sun at Makola.

You will always be different, laughed at, scorned, asked questions of, thought as stupid, eccentric, too-known, etc. Because you will choose not to be comfortable. You will always live outside a comfort zone. That’s the labour pain to create the legacy. There isn’t any idle moment. There is always a hustle. And sometimes, you got to step right into the pit with your employees, work in the sun with them, eat with them, cry with them, laugh with them. Because that’s humanity.

There isn’t any idle moment. There is always a hustle. And sometimes, you’ve got to step right into the pit with your employees, work in the sun with them, eat with them, cry with them, laugh with them. Because that’s humanity.

That’s what it is. There aren’t any shortcuts.

Champions are not bred in bedrooms. They grow on the battlefield.

God bless your hustle.