Self-Motivation, Personal Growth and Entrepreneurship Development on DeoluAkinyemi.com

At this time of the year, many religious places of worship start fashioning out their themes for the new and coming year. You begin to hear phrases like this – “No Carry Over!” This is a familiar phrase with university students. Carry over means you failed a course in the previous semester and now you have to carry it over into another year. “No Carry Over”, used in the contest of approaching a new year then means ensuring that all troublesome issues, all scary events and all bad occurrences in your life this year, ought to be dealt with so that you do not have to carry any of them over. While I agree that that this concept is worth pursuing, what I find strange is how different people seek to pursue it, but that again is the topic of another day.

What I want to write about today is something I’m being inspired by God to do. It’s a tough exercise for me, and I’m tempted only to write this and never post it. In fact, I’m writing this on a notepad now. so if this gets to be made public, it’s because I was able to withstand the temptation not to just sit on it, and rationalize my way out of it. Continue Reading »

As I write this, my dad, myself and my brother are in the second family living room, the only men in the senior Akinyemi family. What I find most amusing is that all three of us are completely oblivious of what the other is doing… except myself. We are all holding laptops in front of us, and extremely focused on what we are doing.

No doubt the world is moving forward, and none of us is staying behind. I love my parents, and I celebrate them. They have refused to be lost in old times, they have email addresses, log into the net by themselves, know how to trade forex and keep themselves abreast of what the world is doing, in their own little way. They won’t be living us with a huge inheritance, but they’ve given us more than we could ask, they’ve given us values, education and time. That’s sufficient to start a continent with.

You don’t need to pray to live long, just honor your parents.(honor your father and your mother, that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth, this is the first commandment with promise) You don’t need to beg, pray or work 24/7 to become wealthy, just give to the poor(he that gives to the poor lends to the lord, and he will surely repay). The universe runs on principles,it’s no respecter of persons. Being the best Doctor in the world does not make gravity favor you if you mistakenly fall off a skyscraper. Principles have no respect for degree, pedigree or antecedents, the principles respect only those who act understanding the effect of their actions and channeling it to work in their favor. This however is not a about principles in general, that’s for another day. Today it’s about your parents, can you remember that childhood story where all the animals were starving and encouraged each other to kill their parents so they could eat them, while the dog hid it’s own parents? Can you remember how that when they ran into problems, it was the dog’s mother that provided the solution from hiding? What have you done with your parents? “Alu janjan ki jan !” Continue Reading »

One of the verses of the bible that I found my favorite in my adolescent years was this one, “Great peace have they that love your law, nothing shall offend them”. I used to recite this scripture as an antidote to getting offended by people. I grew up with a grave anger problem, and in my quest to overcome it, this verse was one that proved very useful. Add this to verses like, “be angry, but do not sin”, and “do not let the sun go down on your anger”, I gradually overcame a chronic anger problem before I was 17. A lot has happened to offend me since then, but having learnt to rule my emotions, I have enjoyed great peace.

Towards the end of this year however, I put myself under a lot of pressure to make some people happy, but only a few of them appreciated it. I wondered why this was happening, and I wanted to make some strong resolutions against the new year, about what and what not to ever do again. I wondered why I was so hurt, was it because it wasn’t convenient for me or was my great peace wearing out, due to lack of use? Or was it that I was empowered to see specks because I had a log in my eyes? Yeah, that’s another one, I had grown up assuring myself, that I needed to have a log in my eye to see the speck in another, that what we criticize the most is a tendency that we have capacities to fall into. No sooner after I had felt hurt about people not being appreciative of sacrifices, privileges or gestures, that I realized in reality that I was most guilty of all. I was guilty as sin. Continue Reading »

Someone called me today, and said…”Deolu, pele, you must be over over busy, I can see you have not updated your site in quite a while”, the reality is, I have been extremely busy, but busy doing good things and we have had a lot of good news in the past few days.

Before I feed you with the details of the good news, let me use this opportunity to invite all my friends and visitors on www.deoluakinyemi.com to the official launch of New Naija Club, aka New Nigeria Club, on the 1st of January, 2008; 3:00pm-5:00pm at the Ballmoral Hall, Kudirat Abiola Way, Oregun, Ikeja Lagos. This is an opportunity for you, not only to start out your new year on a powerful note, but to be part of a great new beginning for Nigeria. The New Nigeria Club has been in it’s prelaunch phase for 4 weeks now, and the response has been phenomenal. It has left people wondering what else is there to launch as they feel it’s launched already. But you just make yourself available on the 1st of January, and it will become quite clear to you, that we haven’t started at all.

Key features of the January 1 event include short bursts about the New Nigeria by Prof Pat Utomi, Niyi Adesanya, Fela Durotoye, Gbenga Sesan, Rev (Mrs) George, and my humble self (Adeolu Akinyemi). It’s also featuring Sound Sultan, and some budding musical artists. Based on agreements to partnership we have secured with law enforcement agents, we’ll be having short talks from representatives of EFCC and the Nigeria Police Force. Come January 1, we’ll also be unveiling the mega bank, that has entered into big time partnership with the New Nigeria Club. As I write, we are also concluding negotiations on getting representations from the Federal Government, Ministry of Youth and Sport and National Orientation Agency and the Lagos State Government. Continue Reading »

It’s 4am in the morning…just waking up from a brief sleep. The events of yesterday have so worn me out physically and emotionally, that I couldn’t even scribble a thing before hitting my bed. I have now woken up to pen down a few things… lest I my words lose the graphics of today’s events with time or lest my feelings heal and I forget some details.

Yesterday we went out for the first ever outing of New Nigeria Club. We visited Remand Home Boys and Modupe Cole Home. I’ll tell you clearly from here, that if this was what NNC was formed to do, it is well worth it, as you can’t trade the excitement or happiness of the “children” we saw today for any financial value. While the day left me feeling compassionate, it also steers up anger in me, as I wonder what Nigerians are doing or if Nigerians are even aware of happenings beyond their beautiful homes.

Even if you don’t join NNC, take out time and visit some of these homes, and add value in whichever way you can. This life is bigger than you, your problems are insignificant in the grand scale of things. Are you worried about progress, go and see the man whose been in a home for 35yrs… on one bed as well. NNC added value over the weekend, and I’m proud to tell you that it was fulfilling. Continue Reading »

I have always believed that there is nothing so bad about 3rd world. The world hasn’t stopped, so the fact that we are third world, simply implies that when the positions were scored, we were third. There is nothing wrong with that. He who is third today has the benefit of learning from the 1st and the 2nd. If  the 1st runs into a ditch, the second will avoid the ditch and so will the 3rd. If the second runs into a ditch, the 3rd still has a 3rd chance. It means also that the opportunities we have to get back up after we have screwed up is more. Can someone say to someone – “there is nothing bad with being ranked as 3rd world”.

However, there is something wrong with staying 3rd world, and heading in the wrong direction. It means for as long as life exists, we would never be anything better than 3rd world. The question that ought to bother us as a nation and as individuals, is where is our nation heading. I will not worry about the details of the speed, or the stretch of our movement if direction is uncertain. It is only a fanatic that doubles speed when direction is unsure. I am a student of prophecy and by extension a son of the tribe of Issachar, I am also a student of creativity, and believe that where the future prophesied future seems bleak, another can be invented. Continue Reading »

Our First Charity outing as a club is this weekend. 3pm Saturday, 15th December, 2007

Based on the votes of the members, we have decided to add value to 4 Cases this week. Two of these cases are critical public health cases that we can donate money to without any major paraphernalia. Some of our delegates will go ahead and do this ahead of us.

The rest of us will be going to two places on Saturday. Remand Home Boys Oregun and Modupe Cole, Okota.  We’ll be giving them some of the items they have requested for as needs, spend some time with them and help them refurbish some of their dilapidated structures. In Modupe Cole we’ll be helping them to build a shed, as some of the workshop exercises they have are being done in the sun. In the Remand Home, we will confirm with them today whether it is renovation of one of their hostels that is urgent or helping them with an internet ready computer room.

We will be having coverage for the event from 12 Newspaper houses and 3 Television houses. The News Agency of Nigeria that supplies news for international stations will also be present. Like we confirmed to our members, we want to add visible value. Continue Reading »

I’ve been extremely busy lately as you must have noticed, I’ve bare had time to do many things, but one thing that never leaves my schedule daily is Learning! The day we stop learning is the day we start dying. Michelangelo said it well on his death bed, when he said -”still, I am learning”. I feel genuinely sorry for young people who allow their lives to just slide by. No conscious effort to add value to themselves, no conscious effort to take their lives out of the norms. Just going with the flow, waking, eating and sleeping. Learn… you have to learn everyday. That’s one of the reasons why this site is there, not only for you to read what is most current, but for you to go back to the past and learn.

If you have observed life well, you would have come to know, that the earth supports the negative trend. Rarely will you find maize gathering together somewhere to grow by themselves in commercial quantities -lol. Weed however needs no cultivation. In essence, you don’t need to do anything to grow wrong, just live life normally. The earth also supports the downward trend, it’s flight or upward movement that requires effort, coming down requires no work. Gravity pulls down! The rivers flow towards the lowest point… you want to end up a loser? Do nothing, just wake up when you feel like, eat regularly and sleep as soon as you feel like it.

Sorry for that detour, I’m sure someone needed that reminder. What I want to write about today is selling. If you read my previous articles on Selling, Selling 001 and Selling 002, you will see that selling is something I believe every human being should know a thing or two about. Whether you are a sales man on not, we all sell. We sell ourselves for a Job, a wife or promotion, we sell our perceptions – about football, a drink or someone else, we sell things – sometimes without knowing that is what we are doing. We sell ourselves, our friends e.t.c., we all sell. The most popular books are not written by the best authors, they are written by the best selling authors. Your ability to sell well, will go a long way to position you as the best in whatever your real specialization is. Selling is a skill that can be learnt. In the next few paragraphs, I will be adding one extra touch to helping you increase your selling ability. Read on. Continue Reading »

The excitement mounts everyday in the side of the world where I work and live, not because of the regular reasons, but because everyday we get opportunities to add value to more lives. 2007 has been a year of years for me, and I marvel at what I see ahead for 2008. I’m going to do a proper recap of 2007, with details of the high moments, and the moments just before that. 2007 alone can be a novel, and every page will lift with excitement, God has been good.

Someone walked into my office 3 days ago, and told me something profound. He asked me if I understood what I was doing, I wondered what he meant. He went ahead to tell me that he feels what NNC has achieved in getting an opportunity for people to buy land for N18,000 per month is awesome. That N18,000 is the equivalent of what some of them use to drink in a matter of weeks, and now they can see opportunities. He says we have brought property ownership to the lower middle class. He told me that he had registered himself a number of times into the club because of his interest in the board contest, but now, he was going to change the profile of all the other registerations to his family members as he would want them all to have the NNC ID cards, and take part in the opportunities. (By the way, the land opportunity in this particular estate closes on monday, 10th Dec, 2007)

Believe me, one positive feedback, drowns a lot of negative perceptions. It is very normal that the people the master prepares the banquet for, are not the ones that finally eat it. People fail to try again after haven failed once, and condemn themselves to haven failed. I have decided to remain undetered in my quest to provide value, and to remain accountable to the objectives and outputs we have commited to.

I feel particularly good today, as finally I have a full picture of the healthcare opportunity that is now open to NNC Members. Everybody I have shared this with has marvelled, some even clapped. We had gotten a good deal before, but it got better yesterday as we were able to negotiate some additional things to come with it. Continue Reading »

Effective January 1, all paid members of the club before the 20th of December will proudly have one of these ID cards. You can then begin to get your payout instantaneously into these cards, you can then begin to use these cards to take advantage of the many deals that we will be securing. You will also be able to flash this card, and razzle and dazzle them…lol

All those who become paid registered members before the 20th of December will have their card and membership valid till the 31st of December, 2008. Apart from this, all who become members before the 20th of December, and choose to partake in the health deal, will have a health access code on their ID cards. This health access code will give them access to first class medical care at over 80% discount! Yes you read that right, we are shaving 80% off the price you would have paid for your medical health annual cover. What of members that join after this date? Read on. Continue Reading »