Many people are always shy to admit they ever failed, or never bother to venture because they are scared to be scared by failing, someone once said to me that your library on success isn’t complete without a book on failure.
Failing is dangerous when you let it scar you for a long time or you refuse to learn the lesson involved in the process, honestly I think that every venture that I have invested into, the money I lost was the tuition fee for the lesson I took out of that process.
The experience is most worthy in the story I’m about to share. Finally, I won the contract bid and I executed the job with excitement because I already had a plan to do a betting business which was at the time, new in my country and as well very lucrative, my joy was profound when I got alert after the completion of the job, immediately I swung into action, I was hell bent on establishing a bet9ja shop and I made all enquiry on how to start one, and my location was already pre-determined because I had a sibling who had invested so much into the betting business but in his case, he kept losing funds because his complain was that “one game cut my ticket” so I presumed that since he was good at gifting the betting merchants money, it would be best to put him in charge so he can use his wealth of experience in playing and as well as his fan base to turn customers to our shop.
My first line of action was to rent a shop, which required a one year rent, after that I continued my pursuit of a bet9ja account but at the long run I was told that another had been approved less than 10 meters away from my shop, so I resulted to use another company and finally ended with merrybet.
In a nutshell my savings was approximately 1.8 million naira, I had a knack for excellence, I ensured that my virtual account was activated after 3 days of joining the platform and the shop was up to taste in terms of technology and effects, I wanted it to be best they had ever seen in the town.
The tale began a few days of operations, when I called and my younger brother boldly told me that had given 5k to mum to augment here market money, he said it with so much confidence like I should have applauded him for spending my company money as he pleased, what could I do? It was a mere 5k right? I thought to myself as an excuse to prevent me from doing something stupid.
And that was the beginning of downturns in the finances and I kept funding the main and virtual accounts , and stories of this and that is owing me and finally the straw that broke the camels back was an incident of 12k that the explanation was awkward and I couldn’t comprehend, and finally I lost faith in the business and saw it as a lesson learned, well thought and morals grabbed I must tell you. That was how a savings of a long time went down.
In essence why the boring story you’d be tempted to as, like I said earlier, the mistake and money was the tuition fee I had to pay for the reasonable lesson and those are
- Never mix emotions and business ; just like oil and water never mix so does emotions mixed with business, sorry this is my candid opinion when you have family running your enterprise, they act like it’s their share or maybe inheritance. You keep paying debts you didn’t owe them.
- Learn to react with precise and concise decisions; I had many options to correct wrong situations but I kept making excuses for the downturn
- Put modalities in place to check staff; always have a way to show erring staffs the exit door family or not, from the story you should understand better.
These lessons cost me almost 2million naira to learn and I advise you not pay another cost to learn it, like Chez B always said “ if one can reach one, one could reach one” have a lovely day ahead .
Precious Omobude Sr