Speaking as guest speaker at the annual summit, organised by the Anabel Group at the Oriental Hotel, Lekki, Lagos, Cosmas Mmaduka, the CEO of Coscharis Group, revealed how he built coscharis with only N200. here is the excerpts

What students, graduates should know about entrepreneurship

Many young people want to be entrepreneurs because very many of them look at the finished product. But what many of them fail to see is that there is no finished product that does not go through a process. When you see the finished product, you will like it.

My perspective of business is that for you to be an entrepreneur, you need to understand that it takes hard work initially. It is about the vision you nurture in your mind, about helping to make that vision grow to where people can believe it, touch it and feel it.

At inception, it is only you that have the concept. Many people would not believe you. Many people would doubt you because it never happened and they have not seen it.

The man standing before you today, I represent what you can call mission impossible. If I tell you my story, my background, you will know that nothing is impossible. If anybody has reason to fail, I am the one. If anybody has reason not to succeed, I am the one. At the age of four, my father died. The best I knew of my father was a day that was like a festival in our compound. There were masquerades and people were coming. I thought it was something really nice to happen.

I saw my father lying in bed lifelessly and dressed in black suit, black tie. My mother was at the far corner of the wall crying helplessly. It was a mixed feeling type of event. People were kind to me. In those days, we used to eat rice on Sundays or on a feast day but that day I ate all the rice that I wanted. People were kind and gave me all the attention I needed on that day.

Later in life, I came to know that it was the day my father died. The death of my father cost me the opportunity of going through a formal education. I look at some of these young people today and I feel excited listening to them.

Many of us do not know that you make yourself when you are still young. Everyone of us here today is a product of our thinking. What you think, you become. It all starts from one’s mindset. The death of my father cost me the privilege of attending a formal school. My mother became my guiding angel and mentor. Women make a lot of difference in the lives of their children. My mother was my angel. She was a godly woman, of staunch catholic background. She taught me how to pray. She got us up early in the morning to recite catholic rosary. I did all of these.

My mother inspired me. She spoke words into my ears that I could still recollect at the age of four. My mother told me that I will succeed, that I will go places. And this became a building block in my life.

My entrepreneurial spirit started as a street hawker

When you see children of the age of seven hawking on the streets and you say they are abused, I used to be one of them. My mother discovered my entrepreneurial capability. Before I turned six, I started hawking on the streets. My mother would fry akara in the morning and I would sell on the streets before preparing for school. The best I did in a four corner wall, what you call school is Elementary 3, that is what you call third grade today. Life is not about what happened to you. Rather, it is about how you respond. You can’t decide what life will throw at you but you can decide how to respond.

Many of us focus on a wrong thing. We focus on what is going wrong in our lives. But you need to focus on what is going right in your life. That is why I said that life is about mindset. Anything you come short of in life, some other thing compensates for it. It is about you whether you dwell on those things that are not going well or on the one thing that is working well in your life.

Not having the opportunity to go to school helped me to develop retentive memory. Sometimes people say I have ‘electric brain’. There is nothing like that. Having stopped schooling in Elementary 3, I couldn’t make note by then. When my colleagues were making notes, I was busy storing what we were discussing in my brain. And when you are opening your note, I will be opening my system upstairs to repeat exactly what happened. So, I was able to comprehend things easily.

Refined in furnace of affliction

At six, my mother couldn’t support me any more and sent me to live with her parents. I lived with my grandparents. It was from there that my uncle took me to do apprenticeship for him in Lagos. The place still exists at Oyingbo Bus Stop. It is a store. There I used to sleep.

Initially, my uncle thought I was too young to take care of myself Read more at the source. http://insidergists.com/?p=105

me too.

workable steps

tell us o.

The road to success is always rough but determination sees us through.

Focused

cosharis na big name o..........