Wednesday, February 23, 2011

stick with the PROCESS!




After the launch of our maiden edition of Effectual Magazine, I felt invincible like I was able to do anything.  It seemed that all the pain and toil and planning had paid off and nothing was ever going to go wrong again!

This feeling lasted exactly three weeks because; something happened that I hadn’t thought about.  Immediately after the launch people were calling from all kinds of places to request for the magazine.  The least number of copies they asked for was twenty.  By the tenth day, practically all the copies were out of our hands, and I said to myself we have arrived!

You can imagine my dismay when three weeks later they started to return the magazines, most of them the exact number of copies they collected!  We started to receive reports like, people said it was too expensive; people don’t know the magazine so will rather spend their monies on what they already knew! And even excuses as ridiculous as (and this was from churches) ‘the Pastor’s wife also wants to publish a magazine, and so would not allow for what might be a competition to her own mag, that is yet to be published, to be sold in the church! Waoh! I felt I should pack up the office and go back home.



We had invested so much money and it seemed we were never going to be able to sell the mags!  To make matters worse, my staff was beaten even before we started! As soon as the mags were returned, they started to look for new jobs because; to them it meant that the business was going to collapse soon.

I know if you are trying to live your dream you must have your own version of this story!  And I also know that some of us have given up or are at the verge of giving up because of this snag.

The truth is that moments like this will definitely happen in the course of living your dreams, sooner than you expected actually! 

But let me tell you what is on the flip side, as it happened to me!  After going around discouraged for a while it dawned on me, that I must keep going!  I realized that the only thing that I can do now is find a creative way of marketing the mag and keep doing what I was doing!  I resorted to ensuring that my content remained great and I sent out as many complimentary copies as I could.  Today three years later!  I can say that our market share is increasing by the day.  There is still so much we have not captured, but we are a long way from where we started.

If you will persevere and understand that dreams are for the long haul and never short term, then you will find the will to remain where you are and get going until you hit gold. 

I heard a story long time ago of a man who was contracted to break a rock into pieces with a hammer, and he was at it for months, it seemed to him that he had only been able to chip at the rock in bits so after eight grueling months, he gives up and abandons the work.  A day later a little boy comes playing around the rock and kept kicking his ball against it, by the sixth kick, the rock breaks in two and oil starts to gush out. 

The owner of the rock gives the boy a percent of the proceeds because he broke the rock open.  The truth was that all the while the man was hammering at the rock it was giving way from inside out.  He gave up too soon and so lost his reward.

If you will persevere and stick with the dream, you will reap the reward that lies within it.  Remember, God will not call you to non-profitable work.  Remember, it may seem hard, but if you stick it out, your day will come… nevertheless.

Love you lots,

SistaB

2 comments:

  1. Hi Bidemi -

    Congratulations on your GOD project that has bore fruit for His glory!

    This blessed my soul indeed. It is rich encouragement. Thank you for this faith boost.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey! Pleasure all mine, glory to God!

    ReplyDelete