SUPER EAGLES; HUNGER FOR SUCCESS VS EXPERIENCE

Blessings!  God bless and keep you in this month of February.  

I am not anywhere near what you will call a football fan, neither am I as educated in the game as a lot of people out there.  However, I do know a life principle when I see one.

At this time a few weeks back, in my home country, everyone had something to say about the Super Eagles; our National Football Team, the comments were largely consistent; most of it was negative.  The tournament started  and the mood   remained the same two draws  and a win  by the skin of our teeth   ushered  Nigeria  into  a Quarter final battle   against the  most prominent African time, Cote d’ Ivoire.  Almost everyone, was very sure that we were finished where football was concerned as a nation.  Then the worst happened.  The Coach, Stephen Keshi; for me one of the most purposeful ex national players for Nigeria, released the list of the members of the team that were going to be playing Ivory Coast and he had a number  of home based players!  It was like he poured petrol into an already raging fire, everyone wanted his head!  Surely, he had no idea what coaching was all about!

 

I didn’t watch any match prior to yesterday’s and I didn’t watch yesterday’s either, but you cannot be in Nigeria and not know what’s up if the national team is playing… so I heard all the commentaries from my brothers to my neighbours to people buildings away from us.  As you know Nigerians are pretty passionate people.  Even though I was in my bedroom trying to catch some much needed sleep, it was impossible to miss the fact that Nigeria had won the match.

By this morning, all of Facebook and Blackberry world had been overtaken by Nigerians who always ‘knew’ Nigeria had what it took… everyone suddenly is very proud of our national team and  are expressing  belief in Stephen Keshi’s strategy.  I am not going to try and pick holes in their sudden change of heart and belief but I do know that if you are pursuing a dream, then you can learn a thing or two from this experience.

 

1.       THERE IS ALWAYS ROOM AT THE TOP:- In discussing this subject with my husband this morning, (he is a football aficionado) he told me that Clemens Westerhof had pulled this same feat off in the past, (in AFCON  1990).  But he was pretty sure that a foreign club side does not make the player, what makes him is his talent and his commitment to success.  Just like everyone wrote the team off because it had more home based players than internationals, people may look at your small dream now and write you off. But if you have the same hunger for success like those young men had yesterday, even a savvy and favourite tournament team like the Elephants will not stop you.

2.      PEOPLE ARE LOOKING FOR FRESH EVEN WHEN THEY DON’T KNOW IT – As with most things in life, when we get used to stuff, venturing out  in any other direction can be very uncomfortable, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that when we get ‘fresh’ we are relieved.  The home based players were fresh, inexperienced at that level maybe; but fresh.  Even with your businesses and dream, the key is to be fresh.  Give them something extra in unexpected doses or fashion… even if you are pursuing a dream in a field others have excelled, what makes you stand out is not doing it exactly like they have, but in presenting your own to them fresh.

3.      FRESH HAS SOMETHING TO PROVE – When everyone kept castigating Coach Stephen Keshi’s choice of players, I wondered what their problem was… basically, if these internationals were that good and they are, why will they risk tarnishing their image and reputation on a team most say has been jinxed for nineteen years?  What will playing at AFCON bring them that they don’t already have?  Fame? Money? What?  The home based players on the other hand, were green and fresh, probably never been outside the shores of Nigeria… maybe dreaming to adorn themselves in the national kit was even a tall order.  But here is opportunity thrown on their laps… in my experience people like these have something to prove!  It is why I will prefer to do business with a young up and coming ‘start up’ any day over an established structured one, especially when I need someone to give me great service.  All of us small businesses and new dreamers on the block have something to prove.  What this means is we go the extra mile.  So the next time someone asks you why they should trust you to deliver, tell them because you have something to prove.

Well I did say I was no football buff per se, but I do hope you can draw these parallels between the Super Eagles and you; trying to chart a course for your dream and create a world class business.  In the final analysis, just like the Super Eagles went on to surprise even their most ardent supporters, you too can go on to surprise even yourself.

Remember no matter what they say, you will make it NeverTheLess!

Here is to your success!

Sistar B

The Baby Steps Compound

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Welcome! Where did January go?  It is the 28^th already! Wow!  And the days are never going to stop and wait for any of us to play catch up.  Recently, a task I had not tackled for a while suddenly fell on my plate and it was not funny at all.  While I knew that I had what it takes to deal with this assignment, the magnitude of the work that was required just made me not want to venture into starting.

I spent days agonizing on the volume of work that is required for me to get this done, I whined about the number of hours and days I will have to spend stooped over the computer dealing with it.  I spent over a day scouting the internet for software somewhere that will deal with the work while I had my hands free to do ‘other’ stuff.

The problem was while I was busy doing everything but the work, my deadline was quietly creeping in on me!  Eventually, it dawned on me that I had wasted four days doing nothing but going round in circles… the software I found can only be helpful if I took the initiative and started to do the work one page after the other.

Finally! I woke up from my slumber with the reminder of something I had always known; that all I needed to do was take it one step at a time, and even though it may take a while, I will get where I need to go.  Even though I was looking for a magic wand that I could wave to get the work done in the blink of an eye, it was never going to happen.  I had to do it precept upon precept, line by line.  Even with the software, I still had to take it one little step after the other!

Darren Hardy in his book The Compound Effect, says “No matter what you learn, what strategy or tactic you employ, success comes as the result of the Compound Effect”.  In simple terms, it doesn’t matter what you are trying to achieve with your dream in 2013, it doesn’t matter what lofty plans you have, there are no magic carpets or wands, you will have to do it one step after the other.

The very little steps of success that we take, will all come together to make the big bang that we are looking for.  I know you want the really big contract, where you will earn so much that all your problems and needs are met all at once, (Is that ever going to happen?), it will take the smaller contracts where you have excelled to prepare you for that big one.

I know you will rather have your business situated in a particular area of town and you will rather have certain kinds of clients, what will an office in a choice area of town do for you if you have no track record of successful baby steps with happy small clients.

As January ends, and we all are reflecting on how we have done, please be encouraged that it is not the big or giant steps that constitute the success that you desire, it is the little every day steps that you take towards your dream that will compound into the huge success that you are looking for.

So if you have been too busy chasing the giant leaps that you did nothing about the baby steps, February is another opportunity to begin small and keep doing the little things until pooled together they make a really great mass of success.

Slow and steady wins the race, it is about the steady disciplined steps… they may not seem like much now, but if you keep doing them, they will come together soon enough to release the bang that you seek.  

You may not be flying yet, at least you are crawling, it may not seem like much, it is still movement, and if you keep it up one day you will begin to run and maybe even fly.  No matter what, with every baby step remember, you will make it NeverTheLess, after all, little drops of water can make a mighty ocean.

Hugs 

Sistar B

MORE LESSONS: SUCCESS IS PERSPECTIVE

Hello and welcome, my prayer is that this post meets you well. 

A lot has happened all around the world since the last post, and we are more and more aware that the life we have today is a privilege and should be treated as such.

On the last post, I talked about leveraging your past successes for your future endeavours.  Today, I will want us to take a look at what success means to us individually.  I can appreciate that to a great number of people, success has somehow become synonymous with financial empowerment.  While, I agree that financial abundance is an aspect of success, there are still a lot of people out there who have so much money yet don’t have peace and when you get to talk to them, you discover that what they will deem as success is if they can find peace in their lives.

My point is that success is both objective and relative. What one man may term as success often times differs from the other.  This therefore becomes a perspective issue; it becomes more about what is important to you than what is universally acceptable.

Leading up to the ROTH conference, we had a lot of people ask us questions mostly on what we wanted to achieve with ROTH, and what the picture of success looks like to us.  From the very first edition of ROTH it had been clear that the conference wasn’t about making financial gain, it was about giving of ourselves to others.

ROTH therefore, is that time set aside to bring people together to allow them see what living a dream can be like and give them hope that if we have been able to come this far, then they definitely will be able to go as far as they dream.

Why it has been easy for us these past years not to have made it about money, was and still is the conviction that if we can act as a channel or conduit pipe, we will be able to find others who believe in our vision and are willing to partner with us to make the event happen.  And we want to say thank you to all who partnered with us this year.  God bless you!

Now to your dream, how will this apply?  Simple; do not let others dictate for you what success should look like.  Let your idea of success be derived from what your core value is.  If what your dream is about is about making some major financial break and you are convinced that is the way your dream should go, then by all means work towards that.  If it is not about money, don’t be afraid to say so and stand by what you say.

The truth is you will not be able to satisfy anyone as per whether they think you have succeeded with living your dream or not, because they are bound to see it from the angle of their core values.

Success is simply PERSPECTIVE, what is success to one is not what the other thinks is success and that doesn’t make anyone opinion wrong, just different.

So, if you ask again, was ROTH a success?  Our answer will be a resounding YES!  If you ask us did we make money?  We will say No, but it is all good, because we didn’t set out to make money in the first place, we set out to add value because that is the core of what we believe.

So let me ask you; Are you successful?

Sistar B