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#SmartStart #MentorshipSeries (3): Mentorship Lessons from my Trip on a Nigerian Road

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Benin-Ore-Lagos-Road1Oya… Manchester United don enter Top Seven, two points behind shouting Arsenal and three points behind silent Manchester City. And to all of the Arsenal fans waiting for Welbeck to save them, you are on a long thing, Welbeck wasn’t what you needed and all of you knew it but it’s good if you cling on to the hope that he becomes an Henry. And for lying Mourinho using scope to beg Spain not to invite Costa, I sensed fear, because he knows the day that guy crashes, he would struggle to get fire, fear and goals upfront. Anyways, No football talk today *laughs*.

Good day, my name is Haastrup Steven Adeshope.

This last weekend was a very busy one for me, one that I had to travel over 12 hours on Nigerian roads, an exercise I haven’t done this year. For months now, friends and colleagues of mine have always complained of DELAYED FLIGHTS due to OPERATIONAL REASONS by airlines in Nigeria, and that is after them sending you a text that your flight has been postponed by 2 hours, they still most times further delay by another 2 to 5 hours depending on their madness for that day. A colleague of mine booked an AERO CONTRACTOR ticket from Enugu during August for 2pm and his other friends went by road and they got to Lagos and have forgotten they travelled before AERO CONTRACTOR boarded from Enugu by 8pm and landed Lagos 9pm.

These experiences made me cancel my ticket for Asaba and made me decide to go to ASABA by road which by average estimate from people who ply this road said may take 6 hours from Lagos. Going to Asaba by road was hell, it was rainy so heavy and the big gutters on the road were covered with water so the pot holes couldn’t be assessed before even an SUV dashes into it. If an SUV could suffer that way, I wonder what a car would have gone through on that road this fateful day.

I left Abeokuta for 2pm, got to Asaba for 10pm, thank God for the TRANSFORMATIONAL Benin–Ore Road that Pastor Reno has advertised tire on Twitter, it helped our speed though. Connecting Benin to Asaba was hell, as we were novice and they were no road signs to say this is the road to Asaba and Onitsha and sorts.

Leaving Asaba on Saturday had drowned me in thoughts, as our president (GEJ) was in Benin and some roads were blocked, we couldn’t afford to miss the way this time around and also the big gutters waiting for us was scary to think of. We joyfully didn’t miss our way till we got out of Benin and after Ore, the terrible road awaited us, the rain was falling so hard and so we expected the same situation as when we were going to Asaba and this is where I learnt my MENTORSHIP LESSON.

We saw a transporter 14 sitter CHISCO bus ahead of us, He was running and could avoid all the ditch on the road, He was so good but fast that others never wanted to follow him, they felt running in the rain would be dangerous especially with the road gutters awaiting you from Ore to Ijebu Ode which was a 3 hour journey on an average. We decided to follow though, if a bus could skip and run this way, an SUV should be able to do same. Then we followed this bus, the bus knew the road like a map, as he avoided every holes so we did. Where he ran, we ran, where he slowed, we slowed. It was a pleasurable journey returning, He saved us so much time that we were so excited about the trip. I got home in 5 hours.

3 things I learnt from that trailing mentorship:

  1. Mentorship brings Speed through leveraged experience.
  2. Mentorship builds in YOU confidence
  3. Mentorship makes you equally smart. 

It was simple, we needed a good trail; we identified an experienced bus which qualified it as the right mentor for the journey, we trailed all through the difficult roads until Ijebu Ode and we were not stupid to stay behind the Bus after Ijebu Ode.

Another Lesson,

  1. We knew when it was time to move on.

We were an SUV so we sped past this angelic Bus. Listen to this, because we were an SUV following a Bus didn’t make us less than an SUV; we knew when we had to trail and knew when we had to blaze.

We couldn’t say thank you to the driver though as we were both glassed up… But please show gratitude and know when it’s time to MOVE ON.

I hope you enjoyed my Asaba story. I did it in a rush.

I am your StartUp Management Consultant – Haastrup Steven Adeshope.

Got questions or comments? You can send me a mail via haastrupsteven@gmail.com

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If you missed the last series on Mentorship: (Robust Mentoring) Rules of Engagement; search it out on this platform and read it. It is an awesome building block to getting the best off this Mentorship Series. As for next week, I wouldn’t promise a topic but it would be our last episode on the MENTORSHIP SERIES.  Don’t miss this for anything, it might be another story. Make it a date next Monday here exclusively on Omojuwa.com.

Tell your friends and partners, share it among your followers and mutual friends, it might be all they need to get up and stand tall.

Have a great week ahead.

#SmartStart #MentorshipSeries (2): Robust Mentoring: Rules of Engagement

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The right mentor coaches to be the Best

The right mentor coaches to be the Best

No football talk today Oh. Man United lost shamefully, Welbeck scored for big mouthed Arsenal, Liverpool reviled & rejoiced as they got a defeated mate in Man United while Lampard turned so Frank with his former side (Chelsea). So, no football talk today, until maybe when Man United wins again *smiles*. I came across a very interesting tweet on Twitter weeks ago and I thought I should share this with you especially for this week where there is the World’s biggest ever Climate march in New York… “Everyone talks about leaving a better planet for our kids, can we also put the same effort in leaving better kids for our planet”

Good day, my name is Haastrup Steven Adeshope.

No story today because Man United didn’t win (joking though), so straight to the issue “How do I make Mentorship work for me?” the answer lies simply is in the response “How do I engage my Mentor?” Engagement means RELATING and it takes two to relate successfully. A mentor to protégé relationship isn’t a friend or peer kind of relationship, so it takes wisdom and patience to relate with a mentor. Today, I would be sharing 7 rules for engagement with your mentor or future mentor.

  1. Put their interest ahead of yours: It sounds stupid you may say but that’s how it works here, no mentor wants a parasite who always want his/her interest dominating their relationship. The truth is when you put their interest first, they respond with all support when yours pop up for help.
  1. Be a Person of Integrity: Your mentor would directly or indirectly or should I say consciously or unconsciously through a test for your integrity, if you can be trusted and the result of this would determine the quality of the relationship. So don’t compromise at all.
  1. Be sincere and ready to learn at whatever speed: Be sincere about what you know and what you don’t know, your mentor can’t teach you everything you might need to know so learn the skills essential to the need of your mentor so as to keep interest alive and growing
  1. Become a Person of Value: This for me is becoming indispensable. When you become a person of value, your mentor would find it so hard to think through a day without thinking about you and how much you can contribute to his success and remember that when you become a person of value, they respond with all support when yours pop up for help.
  1. Don’t ask for Money: I never asked for money until a very broke day that I genuinely asked because I was stuck and he gave me 10 times of what I would need and that was the only time I ever did. It made our relationship robust and made myself sincere about real mentorship.
  1. Always seek advice whenever you stuck: Even though their interest is put ahead of yours but no good mentor wants a slave so they want you to be informed about your pursuit and they want to be involved in advising and networking for you whenever you get stuck so learn to genuinely ask for advice. I have won so many mentors over because of the honesty they saw in my person to learn and always ask.
  1. Ask about their welfare: Your mentors would love to be cared about especially from someone they consider a protégé. It would be nice to ask for their welfare once in a while from them, ask about their family and kids when the opportunity arises and all these make for a robust engagement with your mentor.

The 7 tips that I mentioned to you today are practical for me and without a reference to any book, but note that the personality differences of our diverse mentors should make us wise in how we apply them.

The Holy Bible says in a verse and I quote… “The silence was deafening – they had been arguing with one another over who among them was GREATEST. He sat down and summoned the Twelve. “SO YOU WANT FIRST PLACE? THEN TAKE THE LAST PLACE. Be the servant of all.” (MSG Mark 9:34-35)

So it’s simple, pay the price of greatness today. Someone else will someday pay their price for greatness through you. Knowledge wouldn’t teach you in three years what the right mentorship can teach you one year.

I am your StartUp Management Consultant – Haastrup Steven Adeshope.

Got questions or comments? You can send me a mail via haastrupsteven@gmail.com

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If you missed the last series on Mentorship: The Guardian of Pursuit, search it out on this platform and read it. It is an awesome building block to getting the best off this Mentorship Series. Next week, I would be talking about “Mentorship Index: Assessing your Quality during Mentorship”. Don’t miss this for anything. Make it a date next Monday here exclusively on Omojuwa.com.

Tell your friends and partners, share it among your followers and mutual friends, it might be all they need to get up and stand tall.

Have a great week ahead.

#SmartStart #PursuitSeries (4): Clarity (Segun’s Story): Just Chill and See

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black-mam-worriedI think we have been too serious lately, today I intend to crack you up before we go into our last episode of the Pursuit Series, It’s a joke I stole off Twitter… ”A Bentley just bashed a Range Rover SUV in Lekki. The two owners came out, inspected the damage; exchanged business cards and left”… I know you loved that swags that just happened, but seriously if it were to be you what would you have done? *laughs*

Good day, my name is Haastrup Steven Adeshope.

Segun walks in tired, lies on the couch and with a pack of food he got from an eatery down the road, he flings it on the table. Segun screams “I hate this job; It cracks me up, takes all my time and gives me money in return”. On hearing this, I knew Segun has returned from his late work trips around Lagos. I kuku came out of the room and said to him… “Segun Pele o”.

Segun is single, a banker and a focused handsome dude, We have always lived together for the past 3 years now. I can remember Segun usually talks of one day owning his own IT firm that has its own app or service that serves humanity; He says it’s been a longstanding dream for him. I can remember one of those days, Segun came home so tired and said to me while I watched the TV that “My dream seem to be fading, I get consumed chasing customers to bank with us and I so much hate that I feel so stuck”, I just smiled to him and said, at least you earn good money, then Segun amazingly replied saying, My earnings hasn’t made me happy.

One fateful day, Segun surprisingly went for a weekend conference which a friend invited him for and a top notch Nigerian career and business coach was among the ones who spoke, Segun said none of them got to me as that man did. Checking from Segun’s jotter, I discovered, the speaker spoke about “Achieving career and business excellence”. I sha knew that on this historic day Segun came home, so excited and threw his jotter on me, He said, Mr Man, open that thing… I have got my vision back. I picked it up and began reading through and as I read through I kept looking at Segun’s smiling face in between, and then some words caught my eyes then I focused by reading them aloud as he wrote it in his jotter.

“Don’t let your Job become your stop in reaching for a more satisfied you, don’t let it be like its for survival in a country like Naija, see it as either your ladder to the top or your pointer to your course that leads to the top of a very satisfied you. You must love what you do, it should bring satisfaction, that’s the only way your day can be productive and to never stay stuck.

Segun screamed “Like this man was just reading my mind”. I just kept reading aloud…

I want you to ask yourself anytime you feel unhappy that… Today, am I the man I saw 5 years ago? If Yes! Renew your love for what you do, by challenging yourself to knowing or learning more about what you do but If No! Don’t stay regretting your past; Start afresh by beginning to ask yourself… What and Who am I seeing 5 years from now?

A smiling Segun tapped me and said… “Steven! Read this part loud abeg”

If your present environment doesn’t look like where you want to be, don’t just jump ship immediately, you need to Chill and See. When you Chill and See, you will stay happy and always having a productive day because of the profound knowing of what you see and what you are working towards. Remember that while you chill, document what you see, strategize your exit, plan your savings… It is like putting yourself on course to your destination. My best advice for you today is “Stay on Course, Be Happy, Be You!

After reading this and still in stare, Segun faced me and started giving me his own perspective for his own dream, He said, I would start reading relevantly and will also talk to my IT friends about how they started up and what is really needed to start up, because I want to beat however they started, so I need their benchmarks. I looked so awed and screamed, Segun! So what happened? Is this how change comes? The he said… It’s all because today I saw that “Clarity is the backbone of sustainable pursuits”, the truth is my dream will remain vague if I don’t get it clear with in terms of sight and action. Clarity keeps you breathing; you only get snuffed out because you lost sight and then you lost the fight.

Today, after 5 years of smartly quitting his job, Segun owns one of the biggest IT consulting firms in the nation today consulting for many international organizations aside the Federal government and several state governments.

It’s easy, just “Smile, Chill and See” and no matter where you feel you are stuck  you would begin to “Stand and Productively Move”. *smiles*

I am your StartUp Management Consultant – Haastrup Steven Adeshope.

Got questions or comments? You can send me a mail via haastrupsteven@gmail.com

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If you missed the last week episode of the #PursuitSeries – “The Dynamics of Pursuits: Do dreams really change?” search it out on this platform and read it. It is an awesome building block to pursuing productively. Next week, I would be switching to a new series on “Mentorship: Getting your Rib”. Don’t miss this for anything. Make it a date next Monday here exclusively on Omojuwa.com.

Tell your friends and partners, share it among your followers and mutual friends, it might be all they need to get up and stand tall.

Have a great week ahead.

#SmartStart #PursuitSeries (3): The dynamics of Pursuit: Do dreams really Change?

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This morning I woke up with a moody face, feeling like I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. I didn’t wake up too happy and I couldn’t just spot the reason why. I muttered some words of prayer then I remembered I had to speak to Adebola. I swung my left hand blindly to pick up my phone from the left side drawer of my bed and accidentally my left hand went hitting the glass cup with which I used in drinking myself to bed last night. With the frustration of a lazy me looking angrily at a broken glass cup and my precious phone in the midst of it and then my phone cried out ringing with the tune “Because I am Happy by Pharrel”

Good day, my name is Haastrup Steven Adeshope.

Sweetheart, don’t tell me you are still on the bed? Chai! You are a Lazy boy. How was sha your night? And then I replied “Adebola you know I am not lazy, it’s just that I have to sleep very well on my Saturdays, anyways, I had a good and cold night”. Sweetheart I called for a reason, Adebola continued… there is something I want to discuss with you and it has been bothering me. What’s that Adebola? It’s about the work I do; don’t be angry I would be talking very serious this early Saturday morning. It’s because I am so bothered… Steven, you know I am into fashion designing but of recent I have been getting a rich network of people and it has been fetching huge jobs for me.

Great! So what bothers you Adebola?

She stammered… it’s that it is requiring me to go the extra mile of cutting my designs to cloth myself and then sew them which I don’t do before, and this is one part of fashion you know that I don’t like but these recent jobs are huge and I don’t want to be doing this niche-thing and lose out of great jobs like this… Steven, you are my amazing coach aside being my sweetheart, and I would want your advice on what I can do in a fix like this.

“Steven are you still there?” I am Adebola… I was just listening to you and wanted you to finish speaking before I say anything about what you should do.

Adebola! It’s simple! Our dreams are like balls. In execution, we kick them towards the goal of full realization and if we can’t do that, we have failed. That’s why from the beginning, we should be so damn clear about what we want, who we are and who we eventually want to be. We don’t know everything, we don’t know the twists but one thing we know is ourselves.

Adebola! You remember the gist I told you? About when I had this meeting with a former minister of this country and I didn’t ask for a job even though I felt tempted to almost throw away my dreams because this former minister asked me to mention anything I wanted and you can remember what I told you? That I knew what I wanted before the meeting with the former minister, all I said was that I needed LEVERAGE and then I detailed it in our conversation.

Adebola! In your life pursuits, advancements are advisable but make sure they still lead to the same life goals or even an improved, aligned one. Make sure your advancement is not momentary; make sure it is an UPGRADE of your whole person. There are 4 heat signals that would let you know it is time to upgrade, they are:

  1. If recurrent opportunities don’t match your expertise for delivery, then skill up
  2. If it is in vogue and it’s the exceptional requirement of the day, then skill up
  3. If this advancement will bring speed to your pursuit, then skill up.
  4. If you are stagnant and you seem stuck, then skill up.

Steven, were you saying ZIP UP? Adebola, you are not listening, only God knows where your mind was, I said SKILL UP! Conclusively, dreams change, they twist, don’t be scared of losing that so called original dream. To skill up is the only way your idea can survive the speed of pursuit, it’s your maneuver in journeying along. If you don’t, you would be trampled upon. So, watch it, make sure you have probed yourself real good with those 4 questions and make sure you could answer at least 3 of those questions to make your twist right.

I am your StartUp Management Consultant – Haastrup Steven Adeshope.

Got questions or comments? You can send me a mail via haastrupsteven@gmail.com

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If you missed the last week episode of the #PursuitSeries – “Kunle’s Story: It could have been your Story”, search it out on this platform and read it. It is an awesome building block to pursuing productively. Next week, I would be talking on “Clarity: The backbone of sustainable pursuits”. Don’t miss this for anything. Make it a date next Monday here exclusively on Omojuwa.com.

Tell your friends and partners, share it among your followers and mutual friends, it might be all they need to get up and stand tall.

Have a great week ahead.