image: mavensnotebook.com

I have no weekends. Everyday is a workday. From the moment I wake up till the early hours of the next day I'm working. Sometimes I sleep at 4:00am. And when I try to rest in between work or take a nap, my mind keeps analyzing my business operations especially why nothing seems to be working well. I'm working hard but not getting the results I hoped for. This past 4 months, I have gotten more advice than I have gotten in the first 20 years of my life. And I have been trying them one at a time.

It's really hard combining being the one to get business for the company and also being the one to carry out the job. Flipping between the two roles can be nerve wrecking. Just when you are getting into the sales flow you need to work on a programming job and then it takes 2 days to really get into the programming mood. And again, when you feel like programming till kingdom come you have to snap out of it and go pursue sales. 

Every night my back aches. I sleep both mentally and physically exhausted. There is no difference between a Monday and a Saturday. There's no TGIF. I have no weekends. Just like someone did say, I'm at the stage of trying everything. 

And in case you have no idea what it is like to have no weekends, I have made a list of what it's like:

1. No free day to attend events. 
2. No day to fill with your favourite activities.
3. People can't understand why you are always busy.
4. Everyday is a workday.
5. No day to go totally off on.
6. Irregular sleep patterns.
7. Lots of head banging, but not to music. It's the result of walking in the dark, trying to fix issues you can't seem to comprehend.
8. Not knowing when things will get better, when the weekend will finally come.

The only consolation is I'm chasing my dream.

UNICAF is making it possible for Nigerians earning less than 15,000 euros a year (N3.6 million a year or N300k a month) to get an 80% scholarship grant to get an internationally recognized MBA from a partner European or American university.  

The partner European university is University of Nicosia, Cyprus. And here's the registration link to take advantage of the scholarship offer. The partner American university is Marymount California University, and here's the application link. 

And here's from the UNICAF about page:

UNICAF  is one of the most generous scholarship Programmes available. The programme supports students that are domiciled in Africa and provides opportunities for studies towards various distance learning degree programmes awarded by European, British and American universities such as the University of Nicosia and the Marymount California University at a fraction of the cost.

The primary objective of the UNICAF Scholarships Programme is to make education affordable for students from Africa as we believe that it is through education that we can best help to alleviate poverty in Africa. UNICAF provides the opportunity to African students to pursue advanced academic studies and to earn internationally recognized qualifications by studying through distance learning.

For the last two decades our associate institutions have been offering scholarships to international students. The vast majority of these students were able to make a significant contribution to their home countries and in many cases at the highest level.

The UNICAF Scholarship Programme was founded to offer gifted underprivileged students from Africa the opportunity of furthering their education by studying towards internationally accredited qualifications at a much lower cost.

And here's from the Scholarship Eligibility page

Scholarship Eligibility

To apply for the UNICAF Scholarship Programme, candidates should:

Be a permanent resident of an African country or Mauritius.
Be earning less than €15,000 per year
Be available to commence their academic studies within 6 months from the date of receiving admission.
Meet the entry requirements of the respective programme of study.
Academic Eligibility

 MBA

The following admissions criteria must be satisfied for a student to be admitted:

An accredited Bachelor’s degree (European, American) or equivalent (i.e. ACCA).
Proficiency in English – First Degree taught in English or IELTS 6 or TOEFL 550 (paper based) 213 (computer based).
Letters of Recommendation – Two recommendation letters from persons who have known the applicant in his/her educational and professional environment are required.
Curriculum Vitae (CV).
Personal Statement – a comprehensive outline highlighting the applicants’ individual competences and strengths and providing their reflections regarding the expectations and value of the programme as well as to their personal advancement and career development.


M. Ed Educational Leadership & Administration

All applicants for entrance in the Masters of Education programme should have at least a lower second class Bachelor degree (or equivalent) in an area related to education from a recognised university.
Transcript of grades
Applicants with a degree in a related subject taught in English from a recognized university will also be considered.
Applicants with a lower grade will be considered on their own merits.
Two academic reference letters.
Personal Statement: A letter highlighting the applicant’s individual competences and strengths and providing his/her reflections regarding the expectations and value of the programme as well as to his/her personal advancement and career development.
An updated CV (Curriculum Vitae).


BA Business

Regular admission to the BA Business programme requires a High School Leaving Certificate or its equivalent with an average grade of ‘C’. ‘A’ levels are considered to be a form of equivalent qualification.

In addition to a strong academic record, the student’s extracurricular involvement, leadership skills, and other relevant background information are taken into account.

This is a great offer. There Education system is converging, it's like when private universities opened in Nigeria, people discriminated them. Now no one cares if your degree is from Unilag or Babcock. It's like that with online degrees versus on-site degrees. People and companies are no longer caring, as long as your MBA is not from Harvard, MIT, LBS or Stanford, then don't bother explaining if it's online or onsite. 

I have been a member of Amnesty International for about 7 years now. I remember in 2008 when I got a universal declaration of human rights passport from Amnesty International, I never knew I had so many rights. It was an eye opening 25 page passport document and I kept it dearly till I couldn't remember where I safely kept it. Luckily there is an e-copy here for you to know your rights, but there's nothing like the special paper one.

Joining the Amnesty International has been a wonderful experience for me. Until 3 years ago, I used to get regular print magazines will lots of postcards to send to Presidents, Head of states, Prime Ministers and Embassies across the world asking for a policy amendment or requesting the release of the next Nelson Mandela. Then there is yearly December letter writing marathon. Last year, over 2 million letters were written by hundreds of thousands people in 83 countries and led to the release of two unlawfully jailed prisoners. It's one of the easiest way to change the world.

You too can join Amnesty International, http://www.amnesty.org/en/join 

And for the first time Amnesty International is having a training, an online camp, for its international members. It will run from 14 August to 5 September, 2014. 

You'll get to:

• Take an interactive class to learn about how to use social media to create change;
• Develop your knowledge about human rights with some of Amnesty's foremost experts and live guest speakers;
• Get exclusive access to Amnesty International materials; and
• Have opportunities to interact with like-minded people all across the world.

You can register for the online camp here, or via this link https://plus.google.com/events/csnulpe9v83ou9lc4qvl04cod8o?authkey=CL_WntqO8cG1XQ 

Make your voice heard.

Since I began reading The Economist and getting to see the world no longer from a Nigerian standpoint the world no longer looks like a ragbag of the fortunates and the unfortunates. Luck began to shrink in the picture of the world I see. 

image: esri.com

And Nigeria no longer seem such a terrible place to live. I got to understand the true meaning of home advantage. There is no country in the world where a first generation immigrant is not discriminated. In Japan there's a cap to how high you can rise in their business world; in US you'll have a lot of catching up to do while battling subtle racism; in UK they are clear about the fact that they don't want immigrants; in Saudi Arabia you'll become a rich slave; in Russia you will suffer and in Brazil you'll have no true connections. In the long run, there is no true greener pasture. It's up to people to water the pasture where they are and make it greener for them and for a time. Xenophobia is deeply rooted in human nature. No one likes an outsider to beat him on his own turf. There will always be that Pharaoh in every country who (someday) will rise up against the successful immigrants in his country. It has happened in South Africa, Libya, Iraq, Germany, and is happening in Thailand.

The developed countries all worked their way to the top. They measure everything, have professors providing research-based advice on every aspect of the country, operate transparently, kick against corruption, make policies that are not just reactive, make use of their brains and do things right. And some of them started from a state much worse than we are currently in. But we have refused to make the right change. We still don't have an accurate figure of how many we are in this country. No one can vouch for the authenticity of the data the government provides through the National Bureau of Statistics. We sort of celebrate corruption and we don't make research-based decisions. 

Luck has almost no role to play in the way a country turns out to be. We keep complaining that the British put together very different people without seeking their consent and named them Nigeria. But I don't know of any country in the world where the people weren't gathered together by a dictator or war. It's never about how we came together. None of us got the luxury of choosing the family we were born in or picking our siblings, yet we make the most of it. But we have contented ourselves with blaming our national troubles on an amalgamation that happened 100 years ago. We keep leaving out logic and expecting chance to throw us along the path of success. We are not willing to work our way to the top. We still don't see that the world is logical.

Everything we read in the books at school are real. The principle of demand and supply is real. If the supply of jobs is much more than the demand for jobs there will be high unemployment and very low labour wage. If a country exports raw materials and imports finished products it will always be left out of the biggest chunk of value creation in the production chain, and stuck with low level skilled workers. If a country won't prosecute corrupt politicians then they will continue to abound. Just like gravity, nothing defies logic for long.

Surprisingly, I am easily stressed. Just that it's not the usual things that stress other people that stress me. I'm a workaholic, never stressed by work. I always skip meals to spend more time with work. And the most surprising part is that it's same for both the work I enjoy and the one I detest, once I know that I have to do it I make sure it's done. Second, I love taking risks. I sleep better with all my money in the stock market than having it in TBills or a high yield savings account. I'm naturally like that, and I'm constantly shocking my friends. When some of them heard that I had quit my job to start my own business they weren't surprised; to them Michael has always been the crazy risk-loving guy. And I enjoy reading manuals, I don't consider reading the manual of any device I buy as stressful.

image: linkedin.com

Now you'll be wondering, so what stresses me. Most of you already know the number one thing -- phone calls. I've got friends whose energy levels shoot high once they hear their phone ring, and I sometimes wish that will happen to me because I experience the opposite when my phone rings. The number two thing is lengthy discussions; I get headaches from what most people refer to as small talks. I don't know why. But I'm getting used to it, just that I avoid two lengthy discussions in quick succession. And finally, marketing/sales.

Extreme stress for me occurs on a day that I pick lots of phone calls, have many lengthy discussions and go out for marketing. And the way I handle that stress is to sleep for long hours. When I'm extremely stressed I simply shutdown and sleep. Instead of having a grumpy face, I have a sleepy face. And whether it's good or bad is secondary because the action itself is almost involuntary.

It's really amazing that I would rather volunteer to do 5 people's jobs rather than have a 2 hours discussion with those 5 people. Though I'm now good at forcing myself to choose the more reasonable and less instinctual option but it still doesn't make that option more enjoyable. I would rather read lengthy manuals than call a toll-free customer care line. I would rather walk alone than do small talks. But I'm now very good at faking small talks, just that the headache afterwards are not fake.

Luckily, people understand. They know the little I say are a lot and my infrequent communication is not because I don't care. And personally, I don't bother about standing out. When you are naturally different, you will be bothered more about fitting in than standing out.

I'm more active on LinkedIn than on BBM, Facebook, Twitter and any other social media site/tool. And I can't really say it's deliberate, things just turned out that way. As I became more professionally inclined, I ended up checking Facebook once in several days and became very less chatty online. I have so many things competing for my time such that I can't do anything mindlessly. For everything I'm doing there are about 5 other things I could have been doing. And it's so hard to spend time on Facebook scrolling through time wasting posts when I could be spying a possible business partner/client on LinkedIn.

Today's post is a result of the request of one of my dearest blog readers and I know he asked that I write on making the most of LinkedIn more for the benefit of my other blog readers who might pick one or two helpful tips. And I hope to get some feedback tips too, via comments or emails.

You might want to read my 2011 post on how I got a full-time job and a part-time job via LinkedIn. 

LinkedIn is the social network for professionals. And  I believe whoever is working for pay is a professional. So if you fall under that category you should be on LinkedIn. I will also suggest you add me as your connection, my LinkedIn page is http://ng.linkedin.com/in/olafusimichael You should see a profile like the one below.

Now that you are on LinkedIn, how do you make the most of out it?

Before I answer that question I will want you to first understand why you need to make the most out of it. LinkedIn has gotten me the following:

1. A job when I needed one the most.
2. A part-time job
3. A special meeting with the MD of Pearson Nigeria and founder of Kachifo, publisher of Chimamanda Adichie's popular novels.
4. Recruiters' attention, even when I'm not looking for a job.
5. Close contact with the celebrities in my tech world
6. Business partnership requests from fellow Nigerians and foreigners.
7. Content for my numerous CV versions. 
8. Recommendations that money can't buy
9. 1,303 contacts comprising CEOs, HR managers, senior managers and professionals spread across the world. I occasionally get invited to webinars and get to know about really cool stuff happening in the professional world beyond Nigeria via my foreign contacts.
10. Lastly and recently, a meeting with the MD of VConnect.

Now to answering the original question, here are my guidelines to making the most of LinkedIn:

1. Use a professional picture. I'll suggest you don't use a funny looking selfie or the kinds of pictures we fill our Facebook albums with. Use a picture that your company can put in the company brochure.
2. Have an all-star profile by filling your profile page. Let your LinkedIn page be more detailed than your CV.
3. Add all your friends, old and new colleagues, and business associates. Then add lots of HR people, they always accept connection requests and share news about job/business opportunities.
4. Join Lagos Business Club, Nigeria Business Network, Africa - All Things Business, and other LinkedIn groups of interest to you. Like your school alumni group, industry group, interest group, e.t.c.
5. Follow companies you would like to work for or do business with. Don't forget to follow UrBizEdge.
6. Be social. Like people's good updates, say congrats to your contact who just got a new job and endorse your friends for skills you know they have. These give you good karma.
7. Don't post stupid pictures (like the solve if you're a genius pics and other pics that are fit for only Facebook). And don't criticize anyone, swallow your beef. Recruiters and biz partners often check your LinkedIn page. They won't be impressed with any teenager like posts you make.
8. Install the LinkedIn phone app. It syncs with your phone contacts and provide more functionality. And the super cool thing about the LinkedIn app is that you can send a connect request to anyone, unlike the website that might ask you for the person's email.
9. Make it a habit to read through your LinkedIn home page and your favourite group's discussion every weekday or every other weekday.
10. Finally, take advantage of the free offers LinkedIn occasionally give. I recently got a $50 advert coupon which I used to promote my company services to big potential clients. I'm trying to take advantage of the free one month premium offer. 

And that's how I believe you can make the most of LinkedIn.

Whatever it is you want to become you have got all it takes to become it. Whenever you tell yourself that you can't achieve a desired goal for whatever reason, logical or emotional, you are cheating yourself. You are like a commercial farmer and you have got the tractor in you already, every other tool is an addon -- cultivators, tillers, planters, harrows, e.t.c. 

The only thing that can prevent you from achieving your goal is you, not the lack of anything. My best movie quote is from King Kong where Carl Denham after trapping Jack Driscoll on the ship and upon hearing Jack say he loves the theatre, made the following statement: "If you really loved it, you would have jumped." That statement has been my biggest motivator. It showed me that it's right to give all you've got to get what you truly want. That sometimes all it takes is all you've got. And we all know that an inner fire can't be quenched as long as the host keeps fanning it. Nothing is impossible to a determined man. All he needs is already within him and determination ensures that he finds and harnesses them.  

I have this rare video interview of Steve Jobs, it's the video that has most impacted my life. The first time I watched it I was sure that my happiness lies in taking intelligent risks, charting my own course and ignoring failure. It showed me that the only way I can make the most of my potentials is to make a career out of what I am most passionate about, that thing I will jump of a ship for (quit everything for). Now when I watch that video I smile at myself because I'm now doing just that. I'm doing the things I am most passionate about and I'm proud of giving up a lot for it. Though my goals are fuzzy, my passions aren't. If I had all the money in the world I would be doing what I'm currently doing, just on a larger scale. And that is what it means to find your true passion and follow it, or them in my case. You become obsessed with achieving it that you stop counting the cost. And Steve Jobs referred to it as living in such a way that if you knew you were going to die tomorrow you still wouldn't change a bit (except update your will).

So whatever it is you really want to be, go after it because you've got all it takes. And remember that sometimes it will take all you've got, but if it's your true passion it will always be worth it.

I'm beginning to enjoy the entrepreneurial world. I can waste a whole day and not feel sad about it. In the entrepreneurial world activity doesn't equal income. In fact, your most productive moments will be random ones and probably be seen as productive only in retrospect. Your best ideas come when you are least active. But the thing I love most about being an entrepreneur is that the growth curve is a special one. It is exponential.

Though businesses can and do fail, entrepreneurs don't. It's not possible for an entrepreneur to fail, he can only give up. Most of the big companies in the world today started from an average guy's savings and several iteration of his original idea. The biggest determinant of success in the entrepreneurial world is simply how tenacious and flexible you are. 

Shell (yeah, that oil company) started as a dealer in antiques and shells. Who could have imagined that a small company importing and selling shells will someday become the world's biggest company, earning more money than most countries in the world. And that pattern of growth is same for all successful companies. And all entrepreneurs who do not give up end up building a successful company.

Companies are like people. Just as we have all kinds of people -- dumb, smart, stupid, unreasonable, intelligent, social, unsocial, brave, timid, big-picture obsessed, no-beyond-the-nose vision and so on. So also are companies. Some companies will always succeed more than others because they've got a better education and well developed intelligence. And while some companies will keep growing and preparing themselves for the future others will stay complacent and not see beyond their noses. So when you read those statistics on companies and their failure rates know that it's like reading the world's poverty report. More than 80% of the people in the world are very poor, living on less than $10 a day. Yet you won't decide not to marry because there is a global probability of 80% that each of your child will end up very poor. You know better than that statistics; you know that if you take good care of your child and provide him good education he won't end up with that 80%. And so it is with building companies, the statistics you read is also irrelevant in individual circumstances; if a company is built right it will survive and flourish.

So entrepreneurs have a big advantage, they can afford to fail as many times as required or spend as long as is necessary to learn how to successfully build a company. And once they've acquired that skill their growth start skyrocketing.

When we have a goal, the default way we go about achieving it is by laying out a detailed plan and then executing the plan. That is called success by planning. In fact, in school and while growing up, we were encouraged to use only this method: we were constantly told "He who fails to plan, plans to fail". And for most of us that's the only way we know to achieving success. But I plan to change that. By the time you read to the end of this post you will now know one more way that is just as or even more effective than success by planning. And it is called success by elimination.

I'm sure you've heard of Thomas Edison and how he failed 1000 times before finally succeeding at inventing the first commercial light bulb. He explained it as him finding 1000 ways you couldn't make the light bulb. And that is success by elimination. It involves trying everything and striking out whatever doesn't work. To whoever sees you at the beginning you are just beating about the bush. You look unserious, delusional. You've got no detailed plan of how you'll achieve your goal. You are constantly trying one way or the other, unfocused. It's becoming hard to keep count of your failed attempts. To most people, you have planned to failed.

700 or 1000 times? This must be the work of a sales guy

Yeah, as you keep eliminating ways that won't work you get closer to ways that will work. And in the end you'll find that one way that works. It's a little like brute force. 

And that's the way I'm now trying to go about my sales/marketing predicament. I'm trying out everything I've read, whether they make sense to me or not. Then I'll eliminate the ones that obviously aren't working. This is the only option I have got as the books I was hoping to help me find a blueprint have been very confusing; every author has his own theories which often contradict that of other authors, and as this is not Mathematics where I could resort to using first principles to figure out who is right, I have to just try out everything and find out by elimination what really works.

Based on recommendations, offline and online, I bought Psychology of Selling by Brian Tracy and Spin Selling by Neil Rackham. Reading them has been like reading the Communist Manifesto and Declaration of Independence. But I liked the Spin Selling better, it's got more compelling arguments and is a more enjoyable read. Unlike the Psychology of Selling which was written like a motivational book: full of unnecessary repetitions, using emotive arguments and better listened to than read.

So like Thomas Edison, the only way I'm going to figure out the right sales strategy is to try all the sales strategies and then eliminate the ones that aren't working. Success by elimination.

Ever gone to a website and rather than get access to the services the website provides you get this page on the website telling you that your location is not supported or the website doesn't provide services for your country. Well, I get that a lot. 

The ones that get to me most are when I read about a wonder application, then I go to the android app store to search for it but it doesn't show up. I then go on my PC and when I finally find it I'm told it's not available for my country. 

Netflix won't work for you if you live in Nigeria.

Pandora won't either.

And a lot of many great phone apps. They won't even show up in the app store if you use android. And for Apple, registering your iPhone or iPad with a Nigerian address is same as locking yourself out of the numerous services Apple provides. Luckily, I got my iOS device when Apple wouldn't let you register the device with a Nigerian address. I had to buy an address in US (it's amazing the things you can buy online, I even got a phone number too and all legit). Though I have unrestricted access like the US Apple accounts have, some apps still won't work because they know I'm in Nigeria. And for Windows store, some of the Microsoft juicy apps don't work in Nigeria. 

Fortunately, there is a solution -- Hola. Yes, Hola.

It lets you access any site as if your PC or device is connected to a WiFi in Washington, D.C. And it works on PC and android. No more "Sorry your country is not supported." No more "This service is unavailable in Nigeria." 

You can watch movies free for the first month on your Smart TV, PC (laptop or desktop) and Android phone courtesy Netflix. Just get a supercheap internet plan (Spectranet night plan is amazing, 40GB for N4,000). Watch movies at night and on weekends, and still have more than enough to download heavy files and work outside office. Saves you DSTV subscription (if you use it mainly for movies) and a separate internet subscription. 

Watch movies at HD quality, the same movies Silverbird cinema is showing (with lots of intro annoying adverts). And if you want to keep your subscription after the first month, it's just about N1,300 per month. So for about N5,300 (N4,000 for internet, night + weekends + public hols, and N1,300 for Netflix) you have DSTV premium movie channels equivalent with choice of which movie to watch. And all the foreign series your UK and US friends are constantly talking about.

And for the sites that have richer contents for US users, you can now access same contents. Like Amazon and even Google (yeah, we only get a part of Google in Nigeria).

So it might be time for you to Hola.