A few days ago, Felix, a childhood friend that I had not seen or heard from since we both left secondary school in Jos (he went to St. John’s College whilst I went to St. Murumba College) called me up from the blue.
After all the usual felicitations he commended me for attaining national prominence the way I did despite the ‘ordinariness’ of our foundation coming out of Jos. Of course, I knew what he meant.
I have probably been the most hyped and most visible retired sports person in Nigerian sports. My time in professional sport and life since retiring, almost half a Century of both connected to the media in one form or the other, have kept me constantly in public eye.
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Felix considered me a very successful business man in the field of sports. And he said so in a few words.
The situation is that even when I was playing football on a full-time basis as a Civil servant in Oyo State, I was so afraid of the uncertainty of life-after-sport that I veered early into business, buying and selling sports kits, beer, soft drinks, cement and even aspects of the media, none of which I was formally trained for. I never thought I needed any training.
From my personal observation, the life-after-sport of former famous sports persons, were not good adverts. So, in my mind some form of business (I was not going to practice Mechanical engineering because I had no deep passion for it) was the answer to guaranteeing a successful life after the glitz and the glitter of a career in sports.
So, I understood what Felix was talking about. Optically, the image I conjure in pubic is of a very successful and probably very rich retired person. He even wondered how much I must be worth by now, in Dollars and Pounds.
He was right. By now, following decades of my restlessness in the business world, doing this and doing that, I should be swimming in the pool of international currencies. But I am not.
Occasionally also, I would wonder why I am not in the material class of millionaires and billionaires even as I have carefully nurtured a good name and kept a clean reputation that should put me in that category. Yet I still struggle to float above the waters of survival. My life is an optical illusion of material ‘success’ in the classic sense of it.
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The reality now, however, is that despite my huge unquantifiable ‘success’, the past 4 days have revealed to me why I would be a great model for ‘how NOT to start and run business’. Put more succinctly, my business life, copied, would be a perfect model for ‘how to fail in business’. It has been a complete antithesis of good business model.
In the past 4 days, I have come to realize there were missing ingredients in my foundation, the things I did not do right at the start of my venture into that uncharted, dog-eat-dog world. I was without proper grounding, without any formal or informal training, and without guidance into what was characterized by uncertainty, constant changes, unending challenges, and dangerous minefields in business.
It’s been like a life-time ago since I retired from an active sports career. It’s been over 4 decades of foraying into business.
But it is now, after 3 days of sitting in a classroom and listening to a young man called Adeola Badmus of Piston and Fusion Business Academy, that took several of us ‘students’ (management and Directors of StillEarth Holdings where I humbly serve as a Director) through a Master Class course in Business Strategy and Planning, that I have been humbled by learning that I could have been a very successful multi-billion Dollar businessman today armed with the lessons and teachings from that 3-day course.
I wish I knew, eons ago when my talent in football was just sprouting, a little of what I have just learnt in 3 days.
I wish I had the sense then to have sat at the foot of a mentor or a teacher, and listened to tips on basic, tested principles that would have prepared me adequately, cushioned my chances of failure, and mitigated against certain risks attendant to every business.
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I have been thinking about these things in the past 3 days as my eyes opened reality and to the traps that caught generations of gifted and once-famous sports persons. Knowing these essentials would have freed thousands of sports stars from the landscape littered with stories of hardship, neglect and penury in the evening of life.
I wish I had been better prepared for the future in my own youthful years as access to what I experienced these past four days will mitigate the risk in the adventurous route most superstar athletes take and fail.
I am on the board of a conglomerate – StillEarth Holdings. They offered me the opportunity to return to the classroom and to be reborn.
So, after 3 days of life-changing lessons I have set a new mission for my life.
My mission now is to replicate the model of going to the classroom to prepare young budding gifted boys and girls mainly in sports and entertainment, whose lives are clouded by the prospects of fame and fortune for nurturing in order to sustain for a life time.
I have found out late that the classroom is a strong and safe tower that all can run back to in order to reset the buttons of the principles of succeeding in business.
I shall start to do something about the last 4 days – a program in my secondary school, SOCA, for the young athletes about to graduate and go into the world in the chase of fame and fortune, and arm them with knowledge and information about the business world, the simple principles, the obvious pitfalls, the practices to be avoided, the regular training they need in order to ensure that their lives after sports lead to material successes counted in Dollars and Pounds.
It was a fantastic experience going back to the classroom.
