WHY ARE YOU IN BUSINESS

WHAT IS YOUR BIG ‘WHY’

I ask this because I have seen many people start a business because they felt it was the natural thing to do, their parents did business and it worked out for them, they need another stream of income, they are tired of working for someone or the funniest of them is that they are all about the new fad of getting a side hustle.

These reasons are legit, don’t get me wrong but it has to be deeper than that. If these were any of the reasons I wanted to start a business I would have been an entrepreneur with over 15 years’ experience and possibly I would have started and failed at a lot of things before getting it right.

Having a ‘why’ is like adding fuel to a fire. When a flame is about to go out and you add petrol or kerosene, the flame literally jumps back to life, it is reinvigorated, re-energized. That is the effect having a ‘why’ that is deeper than the above examples would do to you.

I never saw myself as a business person, in fact, ask me about starting a business and I will tell you I don’t have the personality and I was built for the Corporate world, this I thought because I started working in a structured environment in my teenage years, I loved it and made up my mind this was my life. Luckily for me after my youth corps year, I got a job and worked ever since, never thought about doing Business. Even if I wanted to do Business, what can I do?

When the company I worked for had to downsize. My department was the first to go because it was new and the extra costs needed to run it would harm the business so I had to leave. My dream crashed in a matter of minutes.

I was home for like a year and what did I do? I went to start learning how to sew, wanted to cut costs of giving fashion designers so much money to sew for me and my kids.

I still kept in touch with my boss and during one of his check-ins, he said the company had gone virtual to lower the overheads and since I wasn’t doing anything at the moment, I could join the team and do great things. Great things we did in the almost 2 years working together. It was such fun working from home, no Lagos traffic to contend with and being around for the kids more was the icing on the cake for me.

A small virtual team accomplished what teams of 10 people on site at work sometimes struggle to do. Thanks to being trained by one of the most organized, detailed and hardworking workaholics I have had the privilege of knowing.

When the projects were over, It became clear to me that I loved to help make big things happen, I have worked in roles that supported teams and management and I was super great at it. I would rather support than be at the forefront ‘working behind the scenes kind of thing’. There and then, I knew that this was a business I wanted to do i.e support and consult for businesses to execute big things.

With praying to get how I was going to do this and my commitment to personal development thanks to hubby for believing in me and paying for the courses, I began to see possibilities, I took courses on increasing my productivity and starting my entrepreneurial journey thanks to @productivityinsights, I got clarity, a blueprint and strategy on what to do and how to go about it.

So here I am today, I have started, it’s not perfect, I have made and still making mistakes but learning through the process. I am a completely different story from what I told myself, I can bring my dream of being in a Corporate environment into my business.

My point is, it’s a process, don’t just wake up and decide to start a business, go through a process, have a solid foundation, develop yourself and most importantly have a story and find your big ‘WHY’ because it will be the fuel that will keep your passion going. I can testify.

Oke Ariyibi

CEO

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