₦airaland Forum

If you are feeling down, read this,

A girl grumbled to her father about her hard life. She didn't know what she had to do and wanted to give up. She felt tired for fighting and fighting. One problem had been finished but the other overcame.

Her father, a cooker, took her into kitchen. He poured water into three pans and boiled them. After boiling, in the first pan was put some carrots, the second was put some eggs and the last was put with coffee. He waited for them for few minutes without any words from his mouth.

The girl closed her mouth and waited for inpatient, confused by what her father did. After approximately 20 minutes, her father turned off the stove, took out the carrots and put in the bowl. He took the eggs and put in the bowl. After that coffee was poured into the cup.

Turning back to her daughter, he asked, "My sweet heart, what do you see? " "Carrots, eggs, and coffee", she replied.

Her father closed her and asked for touching the carrots. She did and felt that the carrots were soft. After that he asked her to take the eggs and broke them. After peeling them, she got the eggs cooked and hard. The last, the father asked her to smell coffee. She asked generously, "What's the meaning, Father? " He explained that each things had felt the same unfortunate, the boiling water but different action. The strong and hard carrots. The strong and hard carrots became soft and weak after in the boiling water. The fragile eggs and thin epidermis covering the liquor became hard after cooked. Coffee cores were very unique, but they could changed water. "Who are you? " asked her father, "When the calamity knocks your door, how is your reaction? Are you carrots, eggs, or coffee? "

$250k savings is not very much when you have nothing coming in,

I think you should do a part time course. I'm sure you can find a school that you could do it in.

Another thing you should think about is: Where do I want to be in 5 years time?

Considering the job situation in Nigeria and the difficulty in finding work there, I would seriously suggest you keep your job and pursue your education part time.

Doesn't anyone want to be an entrepreneur? Master/Mistress of your own destiny, unlimited income, success?,

Come on guys! and girls!!

Success=Working hard + Being smart

The smart part of the equation is recogniising an opportunity when you see it and seizing that opportunity as quickly as possible. In other words you have to actually know what it is you are working towards, think about it constantly and try as many paths as possible to get it. Eventually you will be successful and then you will have individuals popping up out of the woodwork saying you're lucky.

Read about Mark Cuban who has been described as the accidental billionaire. He wrote about it on his blog (www.blogmaverick.com). He started a company, called broadcast.com, just at the height of the tech boom of 2000 providing audible downloads and videocasts of American sports. He sold it to yahoo for $5.4bn and cashed in his shares. He has always been an entrepreneur but initially developed broadcast as a solution for him to follow sports commentary and watch sports episodes over the internet. When he found that no-one else was doing it, he built the system for himself. It was only when licensing content from US radio stations that he discovered the potential for it. He worked night and day to persuade skeptics that his idea would work. It was when he demonstrated the concept and started producing cold hard cash from the business that Yahoo took notice and bought it from him.

Now I don't know about any of you but I would rather have his 'luck' any day. By the way, Mark was not born into wealth or 'connections'. He is 48, worth $2.6bn and is on Forbes list of the wealthiest people in the world

chimaze

I say go for it. I read your post and thought "this guy has done his homework and knows exactly what he wants" v impressed.

Learn Mandarin as well. Parents in the States are sending their little chldren for Mandarin lessons b/c that is the next wave. You will be very successful b/c even American companies look for people who understand the Chinese and Western culture so you can offer yourself as a Chinese consultant. They love that sort of thing here.

Keep us posted. Good Luck to you

dennylove:
is not as if there's acute job scarcity /we are not employable??,we need know that in this country, everything is by CONNECTIONs.no matter the qualifications,if you don't have the right peoples at THE HEM OF AFFAIR,you will be NOWHERE,accept GOD's INTERVENTION,WHY?do you see women that read AN ENGINEER in the university working as a BANKER?somebody that read NURSE,working in an OIL COMPANY,I mean it sounds crazy, i can't HELP but CRY for this country,MAY GOD HELP US.

Ol boy,

let me die before you bury me

I was writing about the fact that Nigeria is a place full of inefficiencies and where there is inefficiency there is opportunity. I'm saying that Nigerians should not wait for a job but create jobs for themselves.

In the UK or the US, you can have 10 million degrees but if you don't have experience no one is interested. I have worked with people who dropped out of high school but are so skilled wth computers that they command a minimum of 1000 pounds a day and that was way back in 1999, who knows how much they are earning now.

We live in a global economy where talent/skills are at a premium. If you have the skills you can write your own cheque. There are areas right now on the internet that there exists job shortages for because they can't find the people with the skills. Of the few that are available, they are asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars and companies are paying! Wouldn't you like to be in that position? Even if you don't have the skills, get creative and acquire them! If you go for a job and they request a particular skillset, get the skillset and also develop something using that skillset to show that you can do the job! I'm saying use your brain and think! There are many ways to skin a rat.

Don't get me wrong, Nigerians are hardworking. But now it's not just about being hardworking, you also have to think smartly as well. The global competition is fierce. Days are gone when you just get a degree and then you relax. You must do more. That is the kind of global economy we are living in. Accept it or not that's up to you

There are too many people running after too few jobs. That is the way it is in Nigeria at the moment.

If you can't find a job, then start your own company. Study what people may need and sell the product/service to them. Nigerians love to sit around and wait for people to hand them jobs, you have to create your own life and not expect anyone to do the hard work for you

Do research on google or even quicker ask small time printers/publishers in Nigeria. They will tell you what you need to know

I believe is too dangerous to be answering "yes sir, no sir" to anyone. You can get fired anyday, office politics, having to associate with people you don't particularly like etc

Become an entrepreneur but if you absolutely must get a job (and only to gain experience) get into telecomms. That is the future.

ol boy rufaai

you tell seun before you try put sand for im garri?

no try that rubbish otherwise na only you and seun go dey for this forum

You shoud read eolutosins blog

Excellent stuff. Lots of motivational articles that should inspire everyone.

I've noticed that is a steady increase in Nigerian bloggers/entrepreneurs that are inspiratonal, motivated and highly enterprising that don't maon about the state of Nigeria but instead see the opportunities that abound in that environment. It certainly inspires someone like me that lives outside Nigeria to stop complaining and focus on achieveing my goals.

I'd like to see all students in Nigerian Universities opening their eyes to the opportunities around them so that they start thinking for themselves and stop waiting for handouts from other people.

Can you imagine that Malaysia achieved independence the same year as Nigeria and look at how advanced Malaysia is now?

Only Africans can help Africa and that will start with us looking inward for solutions to our problems

This is terrible

Nigeria does not have a maintenance culture and that is the cause of these incidents.

I don't know how Nigeria is supposed to attract investors with unsafe aviation. It's just awful

I've just finished reading a business magazine and the only mention that Nigeria gets is when a Nigerian living in LA gets arrested for possessing over 100,000 SS numbers with the intent to commit fraud!

I think this is an excellent idea.

If people commit to paying x amount each month, then they decide what new ideas to invest in on nairaland. The investment in each idea would be in the form of shares.

You would need to see a business plan for each idea, the management team, what would be the exit strategy for the investor( will the company be sold/ floated on a stock exchange) or if the investment is in form of debt, what kind of returns the investor will receive. You would need show cold hard research that shows this idea will work.

The only problem I see with this is ensuring people don't run off with the money. How can this be guarded against?

Have you got a good business idea?

A highly successful African entrepreneur called Mo Ibrahim has set up a $100m fund to take equity stakes in African companies. He runs a mobile network company called CelTel

So all you people moaning about no finance, put your thinking caps on!

Graduating at your age is not a bigee anymore. It's pretty much de rigeur

Luckily it is a great time to be in Africa because of the rate of change going on.

Decide what you want and go for it


Good Luck!!

I would suggest you stay in London and gain experience. There are lots of fantastic things happening in advertising at the moment especially with the internet so stay in the thick of things there.

As you are really keen on working in nigeria, go for a holiday and meet with the Phillips consulting people and see if you can get a gig offering outsourced consultancy services in your field, i.e. Advertising. You might even be able to persuade your bosses that there is a viable market for Advertising in Nigeria and you could run an office for them there.

If you just think it through, you'll see many ways of getting to your final destination.

Good Luck!!

This is a video I came across.

For all of us that are somehow subsumed with negativity and keep thinking of all the things we can't do and not the things we can, watch this,

http://www.vicjohnson.com/?p=100#comments

You can also start web design classes. Teach students how to setup websites, blogs etc. Teach them HTML, CSS and show them they can make their own income doing this. I know a lot of students in Nigeria don't have money and so would love to find a way to make extra income for themselves.

You could even go into the web hosting business. You can market this business to students and hold the classes in your web cafe. Put yourself in the shoes of students and ask yourself what kind of things do you need help with that would make your life as a student easier.

ebay-ng

You guys will definitely get sued as ebay have registered their trade mark the world over. Ebay is a multi- billion dollar company that can hire the best lawyers on this planet. Have you go those sorts of funds at your disposal? I think not

Good Luck

BTW Can't you people come up with a much more original name? Whogobuy.com is a very original name and if they can execute properly will be worth a lot of money. Stop being lazy

I want to see when we have a nigerian youtube being sold for billons of dollars,

@odada

you're missing the point.

Of course you are entitled to your opinion and so is everyone else. But if you make silly comments then you will be called on them

So suck it up!!

forgiven

Please ignore this woman. She doesn't know what she's talking about

The examples you and I gave are simply that, examples. Yes you will eventually need money to run your business but there are many creative ways to set about starting one without money. But you need to have imagination and boldness

By the way, poultry farmers in this part of the world are multi millionaires. Organic chicken is all the rage

Rock on my brother o jare

Lesson from a Village Banker Who Won a Nobel Peace Prize

Next time somebody uses �village� to insult you think twice! Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank will share this year�s $ 1.4 million Nobel Peace prize money awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee. What lessons can African intellectuals draw from Mr. Yunus� experience?

After studying in the U.S.A, Yunus was agitated by the fact that although he taught nice sounding economic theories in class, they never reduced the number of the hungry and impoverished people in Bangladesh. Alarmed by this, he and his students started an experimental project where they gave women loans of $ 27 to buy straw to make stools. The Grameen bank, which is a result of this project, has given a total of $5.72 billion over the past 30 years. It has 6.61 million borrowers and 2,226 branches.

Africa offers a similar environment where a section of the population is generally viewed to be no only poor but not worth receiving loans from established banks also. Yunus deliberately focused on women as a target to illustrate the liberating effect of business when it reaches the poor. He never went out to the do-gooders to ask them to donate free money to alleviate poverty, but gave loans, which means, recipients had to work or do business in order to repay! �As a bank, you have to reach poor people. That�s a big change, and banking will not be the same�, he was quoted in the Washington Post. How many of our professionals ride on arguments such as �poor market segment� of the population?

By awarding Yunus a Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Committee has vindicated those of us who have been arguing against the idea of pegging Africans to the �less than a dollar a day.� It has also brought to the fore the fact that, all that is needed in Africa is to get professors and their �yellowed notes� out of the classroom to the field to push the 70 per cent population out of subsistence farming. The biggest lesson from this award is that business is the key to fighting poverty!

[b]Educated Africans have many entry points to create their own multi nationals: supply quality agricultural farm inputs to improve food security and set up supply chains for fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides that the rural market can afford. Do not wait for the government � do it for profit. Engage in popularizing the African tribal cuisines and earn millions of dollars. On the Malaria front, create a company that will engage in in-house spraying for reasonable pay and become a millionaire overnight. This will help old people sleep in peace while saving millions of children from Malaria related deaths. Get people clean water, secure African springs and you will make bottled water companies turn green with envy. Instead of complaining about our bank managers who are narrow on what they refer to as a �poor� market segment, capture that segment and initiate a loan scheme.

If you are unemployed, open newspaper pages not to look for job vacancies but to get stories that can be turned into business opportunities. Consider developing anti-theft gadgets, such as a simple watch-lock that a street �hawk� will not simply pull and flee. Solve the problem of rural in-accessibility by creating a network of boda-bodas (bicycles) or donkeys complete with mobile phone back-up. Do not believe that rural villagers have no money and therefore do not deserve services. Based on a study I coordinated in Ukambani, villagers can supply you with more than Ksh 2.5 billion in agricultural cereal seed and over Ksh 105 billion in animal feed requirements annually. Incase you subscribe to the argument that you ought to secure a market for subsistence farmers before you get them producing�you are on the wrong path. Think of the number of innovators in food technology you are limiting by denying them �raw materials�.

Send all those international NGOs packing for brainwashing Africans against the profit motive. How else will the so called poor fight poverty if somebody spends millions of dollars teaching them to hate profits? The Bangladesh village bank has literally grown to a micro-credit multinational and this proves that we in African can achieve anything we want if only we steered clear from those who do not know what it feels like to be poor.
[/b]
The biggest lesson Yunus gives each one of us is that knowledge and application are fields that create far more opportunities than one can imagine while locked up in a class room. By creating loan schemes for the poor including beggars, Yunus� success calls for a rethink on the NGO philosophy that thrives on doling out money to the poor. The village banker has finally vindicated all those who believe that the human mind is indeed capital.

Gettolove

@ onyek + forgiven
You have really shown that the world is full of abundant opportunities especially in nigeria where many of us are theorists,many are still wishing they have millions to start a business while they keep spending thousands on clothes and drinks.

Well said. Me and forgiven are just examples that show that where there is a will there is a way. Like you said we have ignorant people in this country that will just spout rubbish and spend money on owambe or look for people to 419 instead of actually using their brains to think.

Look at Seun, the owner of this forum. Is he not based in Ogun State and runs this forum from there? If you look at the google ranking for this site, it is very high meaning a lot of traffic. All this achieved with minimal amount of capital, determinaton and the desire to succeed.

If we had more of a can do attitude in Nigeria, there wouldn't be such high unemployment and people would create work for themselves instead of sititng on their arses waiting for someone to hand them a job

I've never heard so much pompous rubbish in my whole life.

As you men are too big to work, stay there and starve

Seun,
If you need someone reliable in Port-Harcourt who is humble, hardworking and intelligent, please get in touch with me,. I have the perfect person who will be ideal for you. He fits all of your requirement and wll be happy for the work.

My email address is breview@gmail.com

Radiant

Radiant:
Forgiven, with a BSc, and you still talk like you just graduated from nursery? You need a refund

You better off doing poultry than working for a company .

That's a bit of a nasty comment, don't you think? He was contributing his bit and now you say he should have remained a poultry farmer! Why? Do you know him? Why do Nigerians talk this way sometimes? That's the problem. They can never admire anyone or contribute meaningfully towards a common cause.

No wonder Nigeria is the way it is. No imagination

OldShame

Nairaland.com has over 60,000 members on it. Everytime I come here there always seems to be a lot of activity and comments. A forum dies if you do not have active posters. Nairaland.com also gets a lot of traffic, page views etc. Now if Seun could join some more affiliate CPA programs and throw up some more ads, he would probably make much more than he does at the moment. Also because he has a "sticky" site, i.e. the content is interesting enough for people to stay on, then he could direct sell advertsing space to large internationals. There would be a lot of multinational companies interested in his demographic.

So that's why it's worth alot more than 150,000 naira. And please don't think I'm getting personal. The more Nigerian entrepreneurs the better. And as for him policing the forum, with amount of traffic it gets he has to keep it free of spammers otherwise people will leave.

Good for you on your goodle buy. It jumped when they bought youtube so you are definitely in the money

I can speak from experience here.

When I started a business in Nigeria, I didn't have capital. I had an LPO but no money. What did I do? I went to an investment house and they put up the money in exchange for 50% of the profit. And that started my business career.

There are so many opps in Nigeria because there is a lot of inefficieny there. For example, marketing of small businesses is practically nonexistent. If someone had a good idea there, they could clean up.
I don't see any reason why Nigerians can't teach themselves HTML, CSS and start designing blogs or websites for people.
You can go to rentacoder.com and regsiter as a website desgner and bid for jobs. Where there is a will there is a way.

The guy behind ABC Transport is a former youth corper that started the business with his NYSC allowance. Now it is a very successful business and he has branched out from transport to offer other services. He has sold a portion of the business to foreign investors and recieved good money in $$ for that

As Adidas say "Impossible is nothing"

BTW ideas are a dime a dozen, execution is everything.

OldShame

You are a very funny man. Is that your own version of a "google type" bid to buy nairaland.com? If so you will have to do a lot better than 150,000 naira. This forum is worth a lot more.

BTW, if you're so hot start your own! There's room for everyone. After all we are yet to have large billion dollar website come out of Africa so let the battle begin!!

Google are very sharp. They know exactly how they will monetize youtube. I read somewhere they are planning to share advertising revenue with the owners of the video content a la Revver.com

I think it's fantastic that a website that was started just over 20 months ago has gone on the block for $1.65bn. This goes to show anything is possible. Bebo.com is owned and run by a British guy. That is the 2nd most trafficked website after myspace.com. Viacom offered him $750m to buy the site and he said no. He only started the website last year

Exit timelines are getting shorter because the amounts moving to online advertising are increasing quarter by quarter. I think free content is the business model from now on which would make exclusive copyright very valuable depending on the target audience. You now have companies that are being setup just to trade intellectual property.

I'm looking forward to the couple of years. It's going to be fantastic

nprime:
Needless to say Google's acquisition of YouTube is an inspiration to all aspiring entrepreneurs. I really would like to see an internet company built by Nigerians selling for hundreds of millions of dollars, if not a couple billion. We're very talented and gifted individuals (giant of Africa!) so there's not reason why we too can't cash in on technology and make these millions, if we put our minds to it.

nprime, completely agree with you and I am very certain it will happen one day and about time too.

Although once the nigerians manage to sell the company for billons, armed robbers will start following them all over the place!

I would definitely choose fish

There are foreign fishermen that come to Africa and fish the waters. They take the catch back to their country and sell it for huge profits.

Also Muslims eat only halal meat, no pork so that immediately reduces the size of the market you can sell to. Everyone eats fish all day every day.