When I read our newspapers, listen to our radio stations, watch our TV stations and examine the actions of the people I come across, one thing stands out. Most of us in Nigeria ignore facts. Even when it stares us in the eyes or trips us up, we still ignore it. And that is what I think is our biggest problem in Nigeria.

image: nigerianstalk.org

For some people it's because they are not aware of the facts. Last weekend I heard a driver saying that Nigeria is not mature enough to do permanent voters card. I guess he meant developed enough. Either way, he knows so little about the voters registration process. His case is that of ignorance. 

The other reason people ignore facts is because they chose to. They know the facts and are convinced that they will gain more by ignoring them than accepting them. Our politicians do this almost all the time. They care more about their personal gain than doing what is right.

So why do I think that this is the problem we have in Nigeria? Aren't there people in US and UK who ignore facts? Is this a bigger problem that corruption? 

Yes, there are people in US, UK and every developed country in the world who ignore facts, but not as much as us. We ignore too many obvious facts. Our politicians in government earn too much and employ too many people; they waste too much of the country's money. And we all know, but we ignore it. Boko Haram is flourishing because of few very wealthy people, the government knows these people but wouldn't confront them. It ignores the root of the problem. Our police commits more crime than any group of people in the entire country and we all know it. We ignore both the fact and the police. We ignore so many things that we know should be fixed. And that is what separates us the most from the developed countries: they face their problems headlong.

And as for corruption, there is no where in the world that you won't find corruption. There will always be people wanting to get more than they deserve and taking more than is rightfully theirs. But the real problem is when we let them flourish by ignoring their corrupt activities. When we would rather give a thief a national award than send him to jail. When our legislators and judges ignore obvious facts. That is way more dangerous than the corruption itself. It creates people without conscience and honest people without voices.

We need to confront all the wrong things going on in our country. We need to make wrong doers ashamed of their actions regardless of their political status or wealth. We need to put knowledgeable people in power and make it easy for them to do their jobs. We need to slim down the civil service. We need to pressure the government to reform the police and make them more law abiding. We need to pressure the government to give unlawful soldiers stiffer punishments and swift prosecution. We need to pressure government to put honest leaders in charge of PHCN not people who allow their staff to generate spurious bills and collect bribes. And most importantly, we need to prove that we are bigger than the people in government and that we put them there.

One of my clients generates his own data and they run into millions of rows weekly. And so we agreed that having an in house Database server is essential. Soon we included 2 more server types. Then I dived into the technical part of the implementation and read every relevant article I came across online. And in the end I became knowledgeable on the different major server types and how to determine how many servers you need to buy.

image: datacenterknowledge.com

There are three major server types: Tower servers, Rack-mount servers and Blade servers. 

Tower Server (shop.lenovo.com)

Rack-mount Server (shop.lenovo.com)

Blade servers (pcworld.com)

The tower servers look more like a regular PC system unit. But it is more expensive and usually have much higher configurations than you'll see on a PC. If you decide to get one then you must prepare to make a desk for it (just like your regular desktop PC), so you generally wouldn't want to have more than 2 or 3 of it. Generally, they are the cheapest of the 3 categories for the same specification and they are often regarded as old-school servers.

Rack-mount servers are the most popular servers with small and mid size companies. They are less bulky than the tower servers and can be mounted on a rack. So you can conveniently buy as many as you want without worrying about desk space to put them all.

Then, there are blade servers. They are the newest of the three server types and suited more for big datacenters. They provide an ingenious means of overcoming the problem with installing lots of servers. Tower and rack-mount servers all have to be networked together with external cabling and network peripherals. Blade servers enable you to have a group of servers that can be installed without any cabling and occupies very small space per server. The drawback is that they are very expensive and of use when you plan to have very many servers.

Reading through the forums of CTOs and IT managers, I found out that almost all recommend having a rack-mount server, especially if you are a small or mid-size firm. They  don't take up as much space as tower servers and they give you much more flexibility than blade servers without costing you a fortune.

Finally, how do you determine the number of servers to buy? The wrong way is to think you need a physical server for every application server: database server, file server, mail server and so on. Often times what you need is one or few physical servers running many different application servers either on the same server OS or on different server OS via virtualization. So in many use cases, you are better off buying one high performance server and setting up virtual servers on it than buying different physical servers.

image: hometownroofingcontractors.com

For every one of us who has used Google, we know that the internet is big. That it contains a lot of information. You could do your entire masters thesis relying on only the information you got from the internet. You could learn about anything that interests you through the internet. You could spend the whole day on the internet and not feel bored. And everyday you come across so many new things on the internet that confirms to you that the internet is very big and growing.

But only a few of us really deeply think on how big the internet is and how it's going to change everything. Everything. And I am staking my future on it. 

If you take a cursory look at Facebook, you would think that it's just a website that lets you share news, thoughts and photos with friends and family. But did you know that Facebook is worth more than 10 times Dangote Cement? Even Twitter is worth more than Dangote Cement. And I hope you know that Dangote Cement is the biggest company in Nigeria; bigger than First Bank, Cadbury and Nestle combined. Our biggest company is not as big as Twitter. 

How about I tell you that your international calls go through the internet? All my full-time jobs have been in the telecoms industry and my last one involved me learning about international call routing and even doing some live tinkering. There is an internet cloud between you and everyone you speak with via an international call. And if you use an IP phone, then even your local calls are over the internet, only your intercom might not be over the internet.

Then lets talk about the new trend: online masters. Just as the name suggests, it's obviously over the internet. And there are some of us doing online diplomas and B.Sc. So education is now available over the internet. You can get your B.Sc, M.Sc and Ph.D over the internet.

And still the internet is much bigger than the illustrations I have given above paint. The internet is the new world. Soon the contrast between people who actively use the internet, who live in the internet world, and the people who are reluctant to embrace the internet will be like that between the stone age and the middle age. For the first time in the history of mankind, people who belong to two different millenniums will be living in the same neighbourhood. Or even under the same roof. Poverty will no longer be living under $1 a day but living without internet.

I am betting big time on the great opportunities the growth of internet promises. I am learning to build programs that work only on the internet. I am trading off a lot to be part of the internet content and app creators. I want to be able to bring IoT to Nigeria in a very personal way. I want to also put Nigeria on the web in a very unique way. Because I strongly believe that the internet is the new frontier.

Yesterday I watched a TED video, http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity, and it had a profound effect on me. You can watch it on YouTube also.

Then I watched another one, http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius, and it's also on YouTube.

And I advise you also watch those 2 videos. I am sure you'll pick up many valuable lessons from them. In fact, today's post is about the valuable lesson I got from them. The lesson that doing what you love is always more valuable than high income.

In the first video, Sir Ken Robinson talked about how we become less creative as we grow up and begin to take up dogmas that force us to follow paths dictated by a societal/educational system built on outdated principles. We let what the school we went to and what the HR of companies we care so little about expect of us to form the roadmap for our lives. We let go of our unique passion and talents to conform to the mass produced requirements of a broken educational system and work environment. We suppress the real us to become what the society pays more attention to. We are made to believe that the only way to become someone in life is to follow a traditional career path. Go to school, focus more on Maths and English than the creative arts subjects, get a university degree that is in demand, top it with a Masters, get a regular job with a big company and climb up the management ladder. On the surface it's not wrong and almost all CEOs followed that path. The real trouble with it is that it forces everyone through the same mould. It tries to make an Einstein out of every Shakespeare, Beethoven and Mozart. It suppresses the non-scientific creativity of every child. It forces adults to compete unhealthily with one another on limited opportunities while neglecting the bigger opportunities they were destined to create.

And the second video was more about merging work and life. Having to work in a field you chose and in a way you want such that everyday is an equally enjoyable day, weekday or weekend. This consistently beats high income. When what you do is who you are. Your job isn't turning you into someone you don't want to be but rather shaping you into the man/woman you've always wanted to be. 

Watching those two videos encouraged me to keep on on the path I've recently chosen. That no matter the challenges and sacrifices I will always be better off, because I am following my dream and staying true to myself. Work is no longer what I do for income but what I do because I am me. To tell me to stop working is to tell me to stop being me. I have found what I have passion for and talented at, and regardless of how I go about doing it I will always be happier than if I was doing something else which generates a much higher income.

A company in Slovakia is bringing us closer to using a flying car. A car you can drive like any other car, but with the added ability to also fly like a plane. 

I really like the way the company, Aeromobil, describes it:

AeroMobil. Beautiful flying car. Beautifully integrated. Transforms in seconds from an automobile to an airplane. Gives you freedom to move. 

AeroMobil is a flying car that perfectly makes use of existing infrastructure created for automobiles and planes, and opens doors to real door-to-door travel. As a car it fits into any standard parking space, uses regular gasoline, and can be used in road traffic just like any other car. As a plane it can use any airport in the world, but can also take off and land using any grass strip or paved surface just a few hundred meters long. 

Here is a video of how it works:

And below are pictures of what it looks like. 

You can also check out what a rival company in US is doing too: Terrafugia

And their insanely cool in-works one: TF-X

These are the guys/companies creating the future.

For a while now I have been thinking hard about why I can't simply pump money into my business and see the kind of results other business types see.

A manufacturing company can push its revenue up by cranking out more products and hiring more salespeople. A trading firm can borrow money to expand its business. Even a professional training firm can market its training programs aggressively and get more revenue. Unfortunately, I am moving out of the training sphere. I prefer having to creatively solve problems for companies and building life/work enhancing productivity boosting programs. And as long as I have enough problems to keep me busy I turn down training. So I see my company as a business analysis/intelligence consulting firm. And to my shock the most valuable resource in the consulting world is reputation.

image: colemanmg.com

What you are providing is like a luxury service. Only few people understand what it is, still fewer need your service and a very tiny fraction can afford it. And what plays the biggest role in how much you can charge is your reputation. No one cares how big your company is or how cool your marketing materials are. They only want to know that you can solve their problem, a problem that there is no ready made tool to fix. A problem that requires critical and creative thinking, and then intensive programming. They will also be trusting you with their confidential data. All these make them care only about your competence and reputation. It's easy to convince them that you've got the competence and worth being paid to get the job done. But they will only pay you based on the industry reputation you've got. There's a limit to what your competence can command, an earning ceiling. Then to get above that ceiling, you will need to cash in on your reputation like PwC and KPMG do.

The trouble is that you can't buy a reputation or get it through marketing. It comes only from consistent high quality jobs over a long time. And that is what makes consulting very different from other businesses. You have to slave away at the beginning to grow your reputation. You'll get paid less than you expect. And as you continue delivering high quality jobs, getting positive visibility and being long in the game can you comfortably raise your fees. 

And that is what it has been like for me. Clients care a lot about my portfolio (past clients) and greatly value recommendation of my service by someone else. So I have to bear with low fees and gradually raise it as my reputation increases. And it's like that for all consulting businesses. Your real currency is your past work collection for similar companies and reputation.

Today I woke up to reality. GTB is no longer the great bank I used in 2009. It took a very harrowing experience to accept this and make the necessary adjustment.

Below is the edited copy of the email letter I sent to their complaints department.

To: complaints@gtbank.com
Subject: A very dissatisfied customer. I'm closing my company account, will limit the use of my GTB personal accounts and will sell off all my remaining GTB shares. GTB is no more what it used to be.

Hello GTB,

Until recently I actively used only GTB accounts: my company account, my savings account, my current account and my domiciliary account. I even, until start of this year,  had over 63% of my stocks investment in GTB shares. I had the same fan loyalty as I have towards [name withheld], and would argue with friends and anyone who said another bank was better.

Now all that loyalty is gone and it took a huge effort on GTB’s part to ensure this. I kept overlooking every ill deed by GTB until GTB began killing my company and making very simple things extremely difficult.

It began with a two months delay in processing a dollar payment into my Dorm account last year, and a very rude treatment by one of the bank staff at my local branch screaming at me to answer all his questions (about everything about my life to how I got the dollar cheque) or forfeit the payment. It was resolved and the branch operations head personally apologized after I escalated the issue.

Then this year, I started my own business and naturally decided to open the company account with GTB. It was more strenuous than even the CAC and FIRS registration combined. It looked like the bank wasn’t interested in having more corporate accounts opened. Then two months ago, I landed a contract with [name withheld] (an international Telecoms company) and was asked to get a bank reference letter as part of the process to get registered as a vendor. I got to GTB and was told that my account wasn’t 6 months old yet and I should wait for 2 more months. The logic made no sense to me; here I was trying to grow my business and fund my corporate account and the bank that keeps sending me mails about how they support SMEs is telling me to tell my clients to hold on till my bank account is 6 months  old before they can do business with me.

And what finally tipped the scales was that last week my account satisfied the 6 months requirement and I went to the bank (Ikoyi 2 branch, Lagos) and I was told that my account has suddenly gotten a restriction. They won’t give me the bank reference letter and I can no longer withdraw from my account. All without any prior notice. I had to contact all my clients that they should not pay into my company account but write a check in my name. Very embarrassing.

I kept my cool and decided to fix the issue. I contacted my legal advisers and got a legally binding affidavit regarding the omission of a letter in my surname in just one field in the CAC 7 document (the reason for the restriction on my company account). I put my ongoing jobs on hold and went to the bank only to be told that a court affirmed legal document is invalid. I was pushed around from the CIS to the commercial banking staff and Ops head of the branch. It was like I had come to claim a lottery winning that the bank was generously giving me and it had to make sure I sweat for it.

I left and am now opening an account with FCMB. GTB is not helping my business or even playing neutral, it’s hindering my business. It’s tough running a business and bootstrapping it. I have to work 7 days a week and almost 18hours everyday (skipping church more than anyone should). Then I have to spend from my life savings and work for weeks before I get paid, and still manage my clients. The last thing I need is a bank that will keep adding to my troubles.

I’m leaving GTB for good. And just wanted to let you guys know that as much as you are doing great with social media, eBanking and great branding, you are beginning to slip on the very core things every customer desire most from his bank.

Regards,

Michael Olafusi

• Hoping to win a lottery
• Waiting for some very rich man to adopt you as his protégé.
• Expecting an out-of-this-world opportunity

These are obvious wrong ways to go about being successful. And so I won't be writing about them. Rather, I will be telling you about the one not so obvious way we wrongly seek success.

That wrong way is what Albert Einstein called doing the same thing over and over again and expecting to get a different result. It's when a librarian works diligently at her job and expect to become a billionaire someday. We all know that except she makes some drastic changes in her life, probably quit her librarian job too, and take risks informed on the vast knowledge she has gathered from the library books she has read, she has a negligible chance of becoming a billionaire. The same thing plays out when you see a banker hoping to spend more weekday afternoons with his children. Even if he owns the bank, he's going to have to resign to get that luxury. And the commonest is when you hear people who claim to detest politics say, "If I become the president of Nigeria, I would fix this and that issues first." We all know that you can't become the president without being politically active.

Ordinarily, these have nothing to do with achieving success in life. Not everyone of us see success as being a billionaire or as having free afternoons or as becoming the president of Nigeria. But the real trouble is that most of us treat in the same way the very desires that our fulfillment/success in life is built on. We don't go after our dreams and suddenly expect to achieve them. We keep living life the way we are unhappy with and expect a different outcome. We keep doing things the same way over and over again, and then expect something different as a result.

The most sincere way to put it is that we don't pursue the success we seek and we expect to achieve it. We bother more about what we could lose in the pursuit of our happiness and success rather than the fulfillment we stand to gain. We seek the no failure path to success. We try to do whatever we are doing more intensely and hope for something extra-ordinary. We hold on to what is not working for us because we would rather have a bird in hand than seek out the flock in the forest.

The less obvious wrong way to success is to not go after it directly, to not want to give up anything for it.

It's just a couple of days to the end of year 2014. For everyone of us who had goals we hoped to achieve by or before the end of this year, it's time to evaluate our progress and make a final push for lagging goals.

At the start of this year I had the following goals:

1. That I would let go of my day job and start my own business.
2. That I would make more more money from my business monthly than I made from my day job.
3. That I would finally learn one particular skill I gave up on in 2008.
4. That I would become a good marketer (hinged on goal 1)
5. That having to run my own business will make me less soft and more street smart.
6. That I would spend less time in traffic, sleep better and be more productive.

At about middle of year 2013 I had been seriously considering quitting my job to start my own business. And in October 2013 I almost put in my resignation at work. So at the start of this year my mind was occupied with thoughts of starting my own business and that is why all my goals revolved around that theme. Even the No 3 and No 6 ones.

I finally put in my resignation at work in the Month of March. I got an MVP award from Microsoft on April 1. I spent April and May doing the final paperwork of my business. Just getting a corporate account was more stressful than every other tasks combined. Banks do not make life easy for the small business owner. I took out my life savings. I had some ups and many downs. I almost became despondent. Then I began making some progress.

And as the year progressed I began adding more goals. I added the following goals:

1. To become a web and phone app developer.
2. To become a professional writer
3. To become extremely good in my chosen business field

Now that it's almost end of the year, looking back I can say that I have done impressively well. I have met most of my goals. I don't yet (consistently) make more money from my business than I was making in my day job. I am not yet a good marketer. And I am not yet a web app developer. But I have achieved every other goal, and the one I am most proud of is becoming more business savvy and street smart. Starting my own business has put me under numerous extra-ordinarily tough situations that are forcing me to become less naive. It's changing me in ways, and for good, that I would never have experienced if I stayed in the comfort of a regular job. Everyday I feel myself growing and learning extremely fast. I am having to confront all my shortcomings. And I now live by faith. No assured income and almost empty bank accounts. I have to work a lot and spend my own money before any major business deal clicks. The ones that give instant cash are extremely draining and not what I would like to do for long. I spend more than I earn, but I don't have any regrets because I am learning way more than I could have learned all my life if I hadn't taken the entrepreneurial plunge.

Now over to you. Have you met your 2014 goals?

There is a new weird habit I have now taken up. Or to put it correctly: has now taken me up, as it forced itself on me and wouldn't let go. It's late night blogging. Somehow, I can't seem to switch on, writing-wise, till when it is past midnight. 

Some of us are just very different. Almost like, crazy. When we do things our own way we end up doing it in no other person's way. Whenever we stop trying to fit in and let the real us flow through, we suddenly see the world on one side and ourselves, alone, on another side. Misfits.

image: beangrybefoolish.com

And today I am writing for anyone who is like that. Not for all crazy ones, misfits and round pegs in square holes. No. I'm writing this post for only the ones whom nature has made that way, the ones who can't be anything else, who keep failing at fitting in and who are daily pressured to stop being different. I'm not writing for the musician or graphic artist who is trying to make everyone see him as different. I am writing for the people who can't help being different. For people like me, stuck in a world they don't fit in.

I want to tell you that you regardless of how stupid and crazy you look when you do things your own way, when you embrace the real you within, it's the only real option you've got. Like a smoke, the real you will always sip out. And trying to cover it up is doing yourself harm, as you would be living below your creative capacity. You would be putting aside the things you are extremely good at (that, unfortunately, makes you weird) and focusing on the things you have no natural edge in (that makes you look like everyone else).

I have a mind that works different than that of most people. Everyday, I come across people I have almost nothing in common with. Their actions are just as unreasonable to me as mine is to them. I fumble at small talks and do very well at big talks. The things I do easily are very tough for most other people and the things they do easily are very tough for me. I think too much. I keep to myself. I have no best friend. I love working solo. I don't know how to show that I'm angry and very rarely get angry. I skip food for work. I never give up. I enjoy reading and a thousand times more than talking. I get more work done at night than during the day. I'm a workaholic. I find it extremely difficult to lie and completely unable to pretend that it's the truth. I have an open mind towards most things; I seldom have a fixed opinion about anything or a made up mind. I enjoy volunteering and helping people for free. I'm constantly trying to show people that I'm not as smart as I look.

My blogging is part of embracing the real me. I have books about the great people who were just as different as I am, and I occasionally read them to help me not feel too out of place. I picked a career path than will require intense use of my unique skills, so everyday I get to appreciate my being different. And most importantly I don't compare myself to anyone, it's the surest way to become either complacent or very sad. When you are different, crazy different, embracing the real you is your only ticket to a beautiful life.