Let the Fish Dive

I still have not found a job yet. My plan is to not ever get employed even though I have had the opportunity once or twice. It did not come easy either way. To be honest I was not sure if this is how I wanted to live my life, I mean I need experience to engage in my own business. Most importantly I need to be humble enough to learn from someone in the process of employment. I do not need to be in employment forever to attain this as I will be saving to start up my own business right? Sounds like a win-win situation conceived in an extremely smart mind. These are strategies for life.  However, I also remembered that most entrepreneurship trainings always advised one to jump in just go for it. I’m telling you this is exactly how I want to live my life. So how can I plan to begin a business then postpone it? Does that not go against the very principle of thing I so badly want to engage in? Fortunately for me, something worked in my favor. Something I had never come across just popped its cute head in my life and on my path. A conversation between my friend and I led to me being advised to volunteer. She narrated her experience which I found quite interesting but thought was exaggerated, you know that propaganda the organization must have pushed you to. Nevertheless, I had absolutely nothing to lose and I applied immediately for the program. I was not certain they would pick me. Besides so many of my applications had landed in the hands of rogue people seeking to exploit an already jobless youth and I was getting tired of this. This is why I had been home struggling with my business plan, proposals and God knows what else chasing opportunities to network like mad traffic police in a car chase.

In a fortnight, I had received my response and asked to the assessment where the enterprise explained roughly what we would be doing. I was happy to hear that this was about entrepreneurship. I had been fortunate enough to attend the Mama Sarah Obama Entrepreneurship Summit and this could not be any more guidance than I was expecting. During the conference I had met the finest young entrepreneurs in our country and was determined to walk this path. Now I was picked for the program and trained for a week within which my heart would constantly leap with joy and a sense of fulfillment and the most profound excitement in my life. The next ten weeks would be spent training real entrepreneurs, observing and learning from them. The main idea during training was not to impose in order to achieve the most natural results. At the end of the program we saw real results with some of the mere business ideas turning into small businesses. The entrepreneurs were also more confident and we were happier people to have made impact in other people’s lives and learned so much at the same time, now that is a win-win situation. That is learning and understanding the society’s problems and creating solutions for them. This alone has given me so much faith in my abilities and decisions and I am definitely more confident than ever. I am also more knowledgeable and I realize that it is not lack of humility that leads entrepreneurs to want to work alone and run their own businesses rather than be employed. On the contrary, it is the highest level of humility, responsibility and confidence.

I am not arguing that employment is wrong or undesirable; it is very much a part of learning. It does also earn us a living. To be fair, not everyone is made for entrepreneurship and employment is a completely fulfilling place for such individuals. These are ever motivated by it and will rise so fast through the ladders. But if your intention is to become an entrepreneur, the best thing is to learn on the job. Do a good market research, learn about what you want to venture, the industry, your market and your product costs and affordable losses. Do not be discouraged if you cannot achieve a perfect product at first, instead, test what you have and keep rebuilding it taking into account your market’s feedback until you have the perfect product. I am no longer for the idea that employment will give you all the experience you need for entrepreneurship. Most of the time, employment will become a comfort zone for potential entrepreneurs and they are likely to abandon their crazy dreams after a while. One has to be highly disciplined to finally leave their comfort zone back into their dreams and I mean extremely disciplined. Lastly, I know everyone’s experiences will be unique and employment might be where you find yourself but then I would vouch more for volunteering. The idea is to find yourself and I find the best place to do that is somewhere where you do not need to be pushed. For anyone to volunteer they must have a passion for the course or volunteering itself. Given that fact, they are likely to say no where they are uncomfortable and shape their future for themselves without the constraints of pleasing their boss probably for a raise or promotion.

The most beautiful thing is to learn what you are made for. Like Einstein said, we are all geniuses, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree then it will live all its life believing that it is stupid.