 My entrepreneurial journey started even before I was born. Although she was poor, my mother is the most industrious person I ever knew. I grew up in a small village in Nigeria. There, my mother sold almost everything anyone in the village needed – kerosene, matches, candy, beer, and so on. As a little child, I started helping my mother to sell ground nuts. I hawked the product and never complained about doing it. Some months after I started hawking my mother's products, I started going to the third village to help her buy one of the products she was selling. Again, I liked it. When I was 11, my family relocated to another town. At this time, my mother was battling stroke. As a result, she could not do business anymore, but I remained involved with the business. I did menial jobs to make money. I did art jobs most people today were termed ridiculous. The point here is, in my entire life, has mostly been about selling something to make money. In fact, at 13, I started questioning the school system for teaching me how to become an employee. Today, I don't think it's a bad thing to be an employee, but I hated the idea back then. Haven't spent all my life operating businesses, I disliked the thought of going to school only to be taught how to be an employee. I was 15 and I was looking for a way to start making money. To achieve this goal, I did something really simple but impressive. I collected 2500 naira from my father, which is equivalent to $7, and I bought a used bicycle. I was in my fourth year in high school. I would take my bicycle to school in the morning, which made me become one of the richest kids in my poor school. When the school closed, my mates would follow me to an open field. Like me, they were all too poor to afford a bicycle. I would charge them 5 naira for 5 minutes and 10 naira for 10 minutes. They would enjoy riding my bicycle. On weekends, I would leave my parents' home in the morning and go to an open field. My mates were always waiting for me there. Again, they would pay to ride my bicycle and I was making money. No, it wasn't a lot of money, especially if you are 21 or 33. But for a 15-year-old poor boy, I couldn't believe I was making money. In fact, I thought I was being unethical because these boys paid to ride my bicycle using money meant for their lunch. A little digression here. You see, the rich will forever be getting richer because most poor people are making the rich richer by giving the rich money they don't have. A good example is what happened last year when Apple released a new phone. A 2018 survey by Wallet Hub asked participants if they were willing to borrow money to buy a new iPhone. Nearly 28 million Americans said that they were willing to go into debt to buy a new iPhone. Think about that for a moment. Apple is a trillion-dollar company. All the top shareholders of the company are billionaires. Yet, average citizens were willing to borrow money to buy Apple products to make money for these shareholders. At 15, I was worried I was cheating my mates of their money. But in retrospect, I have no regrets. I have since learned that humans make decisions based on emotions. That's why we go into debt to buy new cars. Very few want to buy used, cheap cars. We spend on what we want rather than what we need. Let's continue my story. After making money with my bicycle for one year, I sold it for the exact amount I bought it. Then, I bought a photo camera. I would take my camera to school and during the launch break, my mates and I would go to the back of the school. Using banana trees and fishponds as background, I would take their pictures there. It cost 18 Naira to produce a photo, but I would charge 16 Naira for my photos. I was making so much profit, I didn't believe making money was that easy. Before, I was an adult. I was a business enthusiast. I loved to build businesses and provide solutions to people while making money along the way. Listen, you probably think I was lucky because my mother was industrious. Well, you're right. Perhaps I wouldn't have become an entrepreneur if my mother was a doctor or a lawyer. But does this mean I was born an entrepreneur? Well, I don't think so. Entrepreneurs are made, not born. Entrepreneurship is a skill, just like music, leadership or even science. Anyone can fall in love with entrepreneurship, but there's a big problem and that is society and school. Most parts of the world have a school system that tries to make everyone an employee. Again, it's not wrong to be an employee, but I honestly think that it's stupid for schools to teach every kid to be an employee. Some people would argue that school actually teaches entrepreneurship and I will tell you that I attended some of these classes where teachers who were employees were teaching us how to build businesses. Those classes were always boring. You simply cannot give what you don't have. Another point here is that we can't build a school system that punishes mistakes and still hopes to train entrepreneurs. How can that be? Entrepreneurship is like experimental science. How can anyone fear mistakes and still be a scientist? How can anyone fear mistakes and want to be an entrepreneur? So, here is my conclusion. If you want to be an entrepreneur, understand that it's not rocket science. It's a mindset. You have to love creating stuff. You have to have great pride in solving problems. You have to love the process of trying and you have to stop making rich people richer and figure out how to get other people to pay you money instead. 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