It was the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey. I had all these spectacular dreams and aspirations of how wonderful my life was going to be from that day I gave my life to flying solo, in pursuit of the dream life of a beach house in the Bahamas, sailing on a 35m Catamaran superyacht. Bought or rented did not matter, so long as I would be sailing in it someday.
Such was my many daydreams, as I believed every word of every motivational speaker I ever listened to. Oh! it was definitely the life of the entrepreneur for me.
If only... you see, I had just escaped the terror of a rather abusive employer, with no penny to my name and only had those dreams to help me maintain some level of sanity as I tried to figure out what my next plan of action would be.
Lady luck would smile on my shattered soul, as I ran into a friend who also had also been bitten by the entrepreneur's bug. So we set out to set up our very own company. How we celebrated when we received the certificate of incorporation, to us at the time, we had arrived fully into the achievers league. How wrong we were!
The work had only begun, Long working hours, Hungry nights turned to fastings, Long treks as we could not afford a car. It was soul shattering and just as we were going to throw in the towel and I was compiling my speech and how I was going to grovel back to my former employer to take me back, we got a call to provide our services to a client in the heart of Lagos.
Heaven knows no celebration like the way we celebrated that one call. We dressed up for the meeting like we were going to visit the President that day. The Meeting was to begin at 10 am, we were there by 9:30 am. We were determined to dot our 'i's and cross our 't' at all cost.
Hard and smart work does pay. The meeting was a huge success even if we were underpriced but at that time any payment at all was welcome, just give us the job. Imagine the joy to have the Managing Director shake hands with us and say those divine words, "congratulations guys, you won the contract and you must begin immediately." How I struggled to hide my tears.
But Lady luck was not done with us at that point, just as we were set to leave his office, the MD remembered they needed to have a similar project done at the factory in Port-Harcourt and said to us, "can you guys be in Port-Harcourt by 10 am tomorrow morning, the site engineer will be waiting to show you around the factory then you can prepare your quotations and send to me via email." Enthusiastically, we nodded in the affirmative.
Not until we left the office did it dawn on us that the timeline given to us to get to Port-Harcourt meant we had to take the next available flight or the very first flight in the morning if we were to meet the deadline.
You may not understand but we were two broke people with no savings account anywhere and not sure of the next meal, thinking of how to buy a flight ticket to Port-Harcourt for a 10 am meeting the next day.
Where there is a will, there is a way or so I was told. We had no option but to take the night bus transport to Port-Harcourt, pray for safety on the roads, get to our destination in the morning, find a cheap motel to refreshen up and head for our meeting looking and feeling like a million dollars. That was the plan. Perfect plan.
Easier said than done.
Look out for the concluding Adventure.
You are the Best Version of You.
