Careers Archives - Page 4 of 5

Things to know before you quit your job

Thinking about leaving your job to start your own business? Consider this: it’s not just about ambition, it’s about having the skills, connections, and courage to navigate the challenges of entrepreneurship. Here’s what you need to know before taking the leap.

I’ve had a decent career and everyone expects me to jump ship to run my own business but I haven’t. This is for different reasons, but those closest to me know that I’m a closet chicken. Run my own business, are you kidding me?

Before you finally consider me a loser, listen to the best of my arguments.

You need skills to run a business
Unless you want to sell pepper and goat meat, you need a decent level of skills to run your own business. The more technical your dream business is, the more the skills you need to have before you jump right in. You want to sell foreign exchange? Better be sure you understand how it works. You want to become a real estate magnate? Make sure you know the difference between sharp sand and plastering sand.

Quite a lot of world-renown founders didn’t have long experiences but they created a whole new set of industries to play in. If you think you know as much as the Google boys or Zack, you can start right away! I wish you luck.

You need connections to land customers
Even if you are going to open a shop to sell gúgúrú and èpà, you need to know people to succeed. And you need gazillion of them: someone to buy key raw materials or products from; someone to facilitate licenses with the government; someone to link you with large corporates who will give contracts, etc.

You even need connections to recruit. If you depend on CVs and LinkedIn profiles to hire workers, you have entered one chance! The quality of your network is what determines how many believers are ready to leave their jobs to join your quest for glory.

It takes time and effort to build your business connections. It’s easier for those in front office roles such as marketing and sales to know a lot of people, than those of us who sit pretty in back offices making lives of others miserable.
And while at it, please work on your attitude. The fact that you are a senior executive with contractors and customers kowtowing to you means nothing. You don’t know the value of that network until you are out of a job.

So while still doing this cushy job, cultivate relationships. Be nice to everyone. Be fair to all and sundry. Help others as much as you can and don’t trample on lowly entrepreneurs.

Not everyone is an entrepreneur
We ain’t all born to be same. Think about it: growing up, some of us wanted to be doctors, politicians, lawyers, strippers, pilots, pimps, bankers, etc. The diversity is what makes the world go round. Imagine a world where everyone is a lawyer? I shudder at such thoughts.

So extending same arguments mean we can’t all be business owners and that doesn’t mean we won’t succeed. I would rather be a Tim Cook than a failed business owner.

A note of warning: The fact that you want to do your own thing doesn’t make you superior to others. Remember that you will recruit people to run your business. If you think working class are idiots, then you are going to treat your staff like idiots and they will, in revenge, do you over.

You need money to run your own business
Forget about your friends and that retired army uncle who promised funding for your silly business ideas, you need cold cash to start a business and preferably yours. When you depend on other people’s cash to get things going, you will end up with bosses worse than where you worked before.

You probably have to work for some time, save everything, forgo vacations and Louis Vuitton bags to save just enough to start.

The thing with money is… it is never enough!

You need balls to start a business
Some call it liver, heart or spine. I call it balls, smooth steel clanging balls. You need big balls to start a business. It’s not child’s play at all. This is where many of us are deficit. We are just scared.

Fear is not a bad thing unless we allow it to overwhelm us. At least that’s what I tell myself when I have a bad day at work.

Presentation matters with business
You don’t need spend a million dollars to look like a millionaire; however the way you look, or present yourself is very important. While dressing like a village headmaster mayn’t affect your salary at month end, it affects the pricing that you can get out of that product you want to sell.

Packaging is everything!

When you run a business, especially at the first stages, the first product you sell is yourself. Be poorly presented and you are likely toast.

Dress nicely. Shine your shoes and work on your poise. Let your PowerPoint be spiffy. These are the things the chickens like us look at when you come around to present your products and services for sale.

You need discipline to run your own show
If you think that when you start your own thing, you can wake up at any time you want and sleep when you feel like, sorry dude, you are in for a rude shock. Those who run their own businesses run long hours and ain’t appreciated. Customers don’t care.

If you can afford a vacation, (a big IF), take it and let’s see if you have any business or customers left by the time you get back.

The best place to learn discipline is right on the job you have now. If you can’t make it to meetings on time, you will be severely punished for it when you have your own thing. If you don’t know how to talk to your customers with respect, they will punish you by taking their businesses to those who appreciate them.

Discipline is extremely important!

Back to planet reality
There are a zillion other reasons to start or not to start a business. If you can hear your balls clanging and the wherewithal to start, go for it, but put the things I have talked above in perspective.

Don’t call your colleagues, who are chicken like me, chickens. We won’t forgive you when things gets rough with you. In fact some of us will dance on the grave of your business. Karma is a b*tch.

Save like your life depends on it. You will need that cash and much more.
If you decide not to start a business and be a career suit like me, hey, better be good at your job – else you find your butt on the curb. Appreciate whatever you have and be grateful for it. If you feel you ain’t appreciated, or paid enough, or respected enough, or celebrated enough, or get enough days off, remember, starting your own business is always an option. But if you don’t hear the clanging balls giving you assurance of success, respect yourself and do your job like a good boy.

Meanwhile…If I haven’t started my own business, where do I get these nuggets of wisdom from? Well, one last rule, don’t believe everything you read on the internet!

This article has also been published at www.bellanaija.com.

Certifications Broke My Heart

Nigerians often seek shortcuts to success. Then there’s the “sure banker”, professional careers. But do certifications truly enhance careers, or are they empty promises? Let’s explore the reality behind the allure.”

Nigerians are funny people. Everyone wants a shortcut to success. For those without the liver to ‘do Yahoo’ or go into politics, sing or act in Nollywood, the obvious choice is having a professional career. I mean a career in just anything… as long it guarantees a chance to impress Baba Nkechi, the neighbor.

I recently went on a rant of how having an extra degree has been mostly fraught with disappointments but I’m not yet done yet.

Will getting certifications or professional qualifications provide my career with a needed boost?

My naïve family and friends think so; and in fact, they feel it’s a “sure banker” strategy.

Let’s talk about it.

Certification and professional exams come in different shapes and sizes. Sexy and luring, boring and deflating. I’m making a half-hearted attempt to categorize them my way. In general it depends on what miserable career you are trying to enhance.

The Compulsory Certifications
Some careers where you can practically kill someone else, such as medicine, pharmacy, etc., are more regulated than nuns in a nunnery. These certifications come under my rant, because they are compulsorily required – else you won’t be allowed to do anything.

For example a lawyer trying to practice without law school degree is flirting with going to jail; the only time you can be allowed to sell drugs without a pharmaceutical certification is when you are a drug dealer. That itself, will get your head missing in Indonesia.

The Computer Certifications
Nigeria welcomed the 1990s with a slew of computer schools – the corner street panacea to everything needed for a modern career. Everyone rushed to do computer education with dubious diplomas but the racket didn’t last for long because did it help build any career except for the account balances of the patrons.

But computer certifications won’t just die easily. It upgraded itself and became the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MSCE). For the first time we had something that if you had, it briefly guaranteed you to be god’s cousin. It actually helped careers… before the charlatans were discovered. MCSE cost one hand and two legs and people got jobs in droves. I remember the wistful way I used to look at Solix Technologies adverts then.

Solix’s a story for another day. Then everybody I knew got on the MCSE train and it stopped being fun.

We moved on to other things.

Oracle certifications glowed briefly. Novell tried for just a few days before it became dead on departure. Cisco seems to have had the best outing so far. TheCCNA was easy to get on, with the promises of a good career as a network administrator. CCIE has been adjudged as visa to career heaven, wherever that is. But once you got on it, you discover that heaven is more of a personal thing. You get me?

I spend dearly every year for my Chartered Fellowship with British Computer Society. 6 years down the line, I’m still trying to justify it. It looks good on my LinkedIn profile though.

The Project Management Certifications
PMP came with a bang, followed by its cousin, Prince2. The myth of project management as a job or career was created by Nigerians who trooped to the UK on the HSMP programs, got there and couldn’t find gold on the streets of London. Hey, don’t crucify me yet! That’s the rumor I heard. I can’t be sure it’s true. Someone confirm for me.

Project Management meant many things.
OK, I was also on the PMP and Prince 2 trains. I did them to show that I’m also smart. I found out I was stupid, as it never did anything for me. I mean nothing!

Quite a number of friends, relatives and even family members did these certifications with a hope that their lives and careers would take a sudden change for the better. It never happened.

The Dead Ass Certifications
How people started doing HR certifications baffles me. I mean HR guys are usually miserable people who endure thousands of emails from jobseekers expecting them to perform miracles, find work and pull promotions out of thin air? They are a fantastic bunch but if you don’t want to become a lecturer in Nigeria despite respecting your uncle that’s a professor, don’t do HR certifications also.

I’m sorry if you did ICAN or ACCA with hope that being an accountant means anything, you need your head examined.

The accounting work has been largely automated with fancy software. When last did you see a job vacancy for accountants? How many of your cousins with accounting degrees are accountants?

The Glory Certifications
If you can pass the CFA, a big IF, you deserve everything you think you deserve. Mostly nothing at times. CFA takes about 3 years to pass alongside 1,000,000 liters of coffee and stubby fingers where the nails have been eaten off and hopefully you get a good job when you are done.

The only one person with CFA that I know whose life changed for the better because of this qualification was one dude who got moved from dead ass role to live ass investor relation job because he has CFA. The job itself doesn’t require CFA.

My Diatribe Against Certifications
Certifications, through the empty promises of improved career and super fly lifestyles provided by “armed robber” salaries, never came! I could have spent the tiny I had on beer and at least forgotten my sorrows for a while. Instead I slaved nights, read dumps, went to boring classes and got shafted.

I was intellectually raped.

And I wasn’t alone. I, being a very nice dude and a gentleman, am asking this question today: can certifications turn your career around or provide a needed leverage?

My humble assessment, if you bother to ask me, is no! I know some people have made it because of the few wonky certifications.

I know a lot of people who have been “healed” in churches too; but hey, we both know where you go when malaria shakes you and rattles your bones.

You may want to read the following carefully.
Too many people are certified, and if you paid attention in your economics class, you would know that demand and supply wreck havoc to the most beautiful things. Once everyone has PMP, your project management certificate means nothing. Don’t even mention Prince2. I don’t know what else you can do with it apart from using it to craft paper kites.

If it was that good, someone would have put a gate on it. You want to do PLAB to be a doctor in the UK and earn good money? Trust me there is at least 7 years of extremely dreadful medical degree between you and that.

Does anyone know any successful accountant around? So why do you subject yourself to incredible cruelty with ICAN and ACCA? Nobody hires accountants these days.

I have been on interviews panels like a billion times and we hardly take a second look at certifications; we look at you! Are you smart? Do you come with a positive attitude?

Can you work without supervision? Do you know why Buhari wouldn’t devalue the Naira? Nobody gives two flying horse legs about certifications – except of course if you are going to be in networking or IT security.

The Outliers
It’s not all doom and gloom. Some certifications will certainly enhance your chances. If you are going to be doing networks, better come with at least a CCNP else you should stay at home. If you have a CCIE, oh, we will roll out a damn red carpet for you. Even better, we will be thinking you are effing crazy not to be in Dubai earning Arab money. UAE, and to a large extent, the Gulf, is a nice place to be if you have Cisco networking certifications.

Same for the increasingly needed IT security experts. The spate of computer attacks these days is scary. So large companies like telecoms, banks, oil and gas, etc. are practically gobbling up IT security experts and no better ways to show you know your left from right than your certifications. CEH, CISM, CISSP, GSEC, etc. are regularly served for dinner.

Guaranteeing Career Success
Ok, I lied. I don’t know how to guarantee career success for you. I mean, I don’t know a single formula. What I know, however, are things you could do to move up the ladder – without spending the money you don’t have on phony certificates.

I’m probably when I’m less busy, I will come back to share some tips. Until then, goodbye and go have a good beer!

This article has also been published at www.bellanaija.com.

Getting your business online

It would be interesting to know how most Nigerian businesses have survived without having websites so far. But then the reasons are not farfetched. Internet penetration in Nigeria used to be very low, so low that years before now the only way you could send an email, even business correspondences with sensitive information, would be to visit the local business center or cybercafé.

But 11 years of the telecom reforms have changed all that. Things have transformed dramatically in the last few years; recent figures released by the World Bank in 2010 showed Nigeria has at about 43 million internet users although the CEO of MainOne, Funke Opeke, put the figure at a less stratospheric 16.5 million. Even using the smaller figure, we can still ask the small to medium size business why this is not the time to have a website. After all, if all Nigerian internet users should form a nation, they would have a population more than 72% of all countries.

A business owner might question if there is a compelling reason why she needs to spend the hard-to-come-by money to put up a website and update it, which is a bigger headache than going online, when she has run a successful business so far? Absolutely! More than ever before, there are so many tangible and immediate benefits, and I will discuss some of them.

In the more developed countries, the average business website generates more business leads than any other means of advertising and Nigeria would rapidly reach that point as more citizens use the internet on a daily basis. Websites are indexed by Google and other search engines and when internet users search for information, your business website would be shown on the search results. You will be amazed at how many searches people from all corners of the globe make about products and information in Nigeria.

A business website extends its brand. Small and medium size businesses need good branding and reputation as much as bigger companies. For a small company, a well-done website can project a bigger profile and a more professional image than it actually has. This should provide leverage when trying to land a new customer.

Customers and casual readers can easily know about your company and other important information without having to work the telephone. People can contact your business using website forms and emails during your non-working hours. Your business telephone contact would also be a relief to anyone trying to call for more details than you have on the website. The opportunities are almost endless. A business with information about itself and its products and services will always trump competitors that cannot be found online.

You can effortlessly keep in touch with your customers by sending newsletters and can easily allow new ones to sign up. In fact, it is so convenient for anyone to keep in touch with your company progress by following the news items which can be posted online.

Printing and sending product information to customers is expensive and modifying the information with new product updates is no less burdensome. A website allows you to publish and update your product and service information easily and as often as you want. You can even tailor your website to allow prospective customers to interact with the information, such as configuring products to get pricing, in ways not possible with paper brochures.

By the time your business is matured enough to transition to ecommerce, sales can happen 24 hours each day to customers that could not have been reached in the ordinary course of business. If possible, you might even be able to run a business 100% online without much of a physical presence.

Nevertheless, going online can be a daunting move for the average business. Questions like what we should do; how much it will cost; who it for us will do; how we maintain this; constantly come up with no easy answer. While there are no clear-cut answers, having a business website is a whole lot easier than it used to be.

For a business that has never been online before, the first question is why should we have a website? Some of the reasons I have talked about, and countless others, would provide justifications.

So what type of website should we have? It could be so tempting to be carried away with the euphoria of having a website. Running before walking can only lead to broken bones. Without the resources and experience, it is almost impossible to have a successful big feature-rich website. So, it is better to start small and expand incrementally with sure, measured steps.

The business must also decide on a domain name – choosing an appropriate domain name could be a frustrating experience. A domain name must reflect the business name as it would be part of the brand. It must also be short and memorable because it is more difficult for customers to remember long or cryptic domain names. Decision must also be made on the Top-Level Domain to register the domain on. A Top-Level Domain, TLD, is the ending part of a website name such as .com, .com.ng, .org, etc. A business domain name, as a matter of professionalism, must be registered under the appropriate TLD.

Registering a commercial business under .org (for non-profit organizations) is a professional faux pas. If the desired domain name is not available in the .com TLD, the same domain name under a .com.ng would be appropriate as long as it does not infringe on any trademark.

Cost has been a big deterrent to going online for businesses trying to break even. But this has been due to ignorance. You can get your business online for as little as N1,600 a year and you could also spend millions. The electronic payments reforms in Nigeria now allows the use of the humble ATM cards (Visa, VPay and GTB MasterCard) to be used to buy domain names and hosting online without the hassles of getting an international debit/credit card.

Furthermore, there are countless IT companies that would build websites with reasonable budget without breaking the bank. You can even build and host a business website for free with Google or Yola.

A website is like a living organism; it needs constant care and attention. Leaving a business website without updates on news and products information portrays a business as badly run or clueless – the last of the impressions a business wants customers to have.

Bummer by Midsummer?

Microsoft acquisition of Nokia looks like a very bad deal. Nothing good has come from Ballmer and Stephen Elop. This may not be different. I predict that Nokia would be the loser for this.

How does it feel, as the CEO of a company, when another company associates with you and everyone screams, losers? That shouldn’t be too far from the disgust Steve Ballmer must have felt skipping back to Seattle this evening.

Today, Nokia finally let the cat of the bag, announcing the hook-up with Redmond but the market reacted to the news negatively. It stripped 10% off the share price before you could wink twice. Apart from someone in my business class, everyone feels Microsoft has just supplied the nails to pin Nokia firmly into its coffin.

No doubt, Nokia lost its mojo, and this can’t be better explained than the burning platform parable made by Stephen Elop.

I wouldn’t mind to add my outcry to this but then maybe a little bit of restrain makes sense at this time. Both guys ain’t idiots but I’m not saying they are smart either. Time will tell: In the mobile world, 1 year is like 1,000 years. By midsummer, we should know if Ballmer has made Nokia a bummer.

Akin goes to school

Akin goes to school is a legendary Nigerian novel read by all in the 70s and 80s. It told the story of a young lad who went to school and became successful despite the hardship of life.

The biggest lesson for me wasn’t how he overcame his adversity but the importance of education. Sometimes when you think you ‘ve had it all, it is time you rebooted.

I’ve worked for 9 years since I hung up my lab coat as an engineer, counting beans for 4 different financial institutions and at this time, all I want to do is kick back my chair and experience the thrill of learning again. I’m going back to my engineering roots to probably stick my fingers in some live wires and let some sparks fly. Ok, maybe something not as dangerous but let’s see what happens.

So I’m off work for 12 months and I’m going to let my hair grow long and wild. Gosh, freedom from the suit feels so great.