THE TRUTH ABOUT SELF-EMPLOYMENT

Ibukun Awosika, an enterpreneur

Let’s start like this- mention four names of a successful entrepreneur of your choice? For me, I will mention Ibunkun Awosika of Socoa Chair, Jimoh Ibrahim- the owner of Mirror newspaper, Mike Adenuga of GLOBACOM, Aliko Dangote of Dangote Groups. That’s OK less I break the rule, I said four! Considering the opulent life of these millionaire entrepreneurs, everybody will like to be self-employed too, including me sef. In fact, our popular motivational speakers have advised us to create jobs and employ others rather than looking for employers, these words are so great!

Every time you pick up a newspaper and look at the business column you see such things like- Work from home, Be your own boss, decide what time to walk, work at your own pace and earn twice what your office can pay you. Many people have unfortunately bitten more than they can chew only to realise the truth about entrepreneurship- what is the truth? Entrepreneurship is about hard work and sacrifice. No wonder some people have gone bankrupt or bitter or both.

I was at a programme titled DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH where Ibukun Awosika spoke about her early days of entrepreneurship- she said she started at the back of her father’s house using her father’s machine and had no funds to execute the projects. Every time clients bring furniture work, she will collect half of the project money to pay for the materials and pay the workers half of their workmanship, when she is done with the project she will collect the remaining balance and balance up the workers then pay the rent of tools. The remaining profit goes into two things- purchase of petty tools for the business and her upkeep.

While her mates in the Banks have bought their beautiful cars, she was driving footwagon (using her foot to walk around). After sometimes however, she stopped buying tools because she had bought all she wanted for the business and she had more money to expand the business. She later had foreign investment partnership and today she is a big woman, she can now work at her pace.

All the promises of gains that self-employment gives are true and real but the flipside of that truth is that it is not automatic, you will have to invest hard work at the beginning and groom the business to a point where you can begin to enjoy all the good benefits that self- employment promises.

Today, Ibukun Awosika is one the Nigerian top entrepreneurship woman, yet, she still took another step to attend the Lagos business school to acquire more management skill, for everything she never had in those days she now have them ten times over. Still thinking of getting self-employed? Count the cost.