iEphraim

This piece is dedicated to my good friend. I know she won’t want her name mentioned here but she will definitely be among the first people to read this. Thank you for the inspiration to write this. At different times in life, we expect to move to the next stage; like after primary school, secondary school, then JAMB, then University, then get a job, then get married, have children, watch them grow, and live happily ever after with your family…hmmm!!! Life would indeed have been so interesting without waiting for too long at any of the stages, it’d have been all trilling and bliss etc, but many a time, what we expect and how we want things to turn out do not always happen the way we expect. The worst part of the whole thing is that those we think/know we are better than always get past us along the way. And we wonder why our case was different. Some would even ask, “God, but why me?” This is a difficult situation to be believe me, I’ve been there not once and not twice. You’ll feel inad...

B usiness owners fall into two categories- the self employed and the entrepreneurs.   The self employed are those who have talent and skill and they know there are people willing to pay them for their time, product and service. So they employ themselves rather than work for someone else. They begin marketing their products and after a while they have some customers. After a while, they find themselves working too many hours, they can’t take too much time off because without them there is no business or income. The entrepreneurs, on the other hand are the business owners who seems to grow their business effortlessly, and maintain steady growth. They can afford to take some time off to participate in other activities because they’ve empowered people to be like them.   What do they know that the self employed do not?   They have gained the entrepreneurial mindset. An entrepreneur is a great strategist and a master at getting others excited about helping them grow their b...

Tackling Management Accounting (MA)   Management Accounting was perhaps my most dreaded course in my PE 1 days. Even after the results were released and I passed, I was still scared!!!       Ok back to you and your MA at the PE1 level, the simple technique which I discovered after the exams was that, MA has standards! There are selected topics in the syllabus that are recurrent year in, year out. You must identify these topics and master them. Some of them are; Capital Budgeting, Standard Costing, Cost Estimation Techniques, etc. You must practice them again and again. When you finally master them, no matter how they twist the questions you will definitely find a way around it.       Passing Advance Audit and Assurance (AAA)   Somehow I’m tempted to say there are no standard ways of passing AAA, but deep down there are! I’ve seen ‘scholars’ write this particular course repeatedly for up to three (3) times! The way I’ve come to understand it is t...

Many times in our journey through life we shift grounds on possibilities. Many times we have this great dream with "high belief", optimism and are so certain that nothing could stop us from achieving them but after a few circumstances ( or passage of time), we soon give up on those dreams. All the optimism soon die down. All the beliefs and high hopes are thrown away and most times we settle for mediocrity. The man that succeeds is the man who holds on till the end. The one who hopes against hope!   The one despite his circumstances or little success, maintains his confessions and positive attitude towards his dreams and aspirations. This one is not worried about failing (or should I say he doesn't care). He is determined in his mind that even if his dreams do not come through, he will keep believing! For some of us there's no going back to our resolve for the good life, the dreams we hold in our heart day in day out. Even if we've got several "NOs", we ...

There was a time that I thought that one day the "book-life" will end. That the everyday reading will stop and I'll finally rest! I thought it was just a phase of life that would end, but then I realized that the older I get the more books I read! I soon realized that reading was not an event but rather a self improvement tactics. It was the only way to remain relevant in this competitive world. When one stopped reading, one deteriorated gradually. Even after getting the job, you find out that with time it becomes monotonous and uninteresting if you don't find a way to improve on yourself and move on to the next level. What gives you the innovation to improve on the job is not in the job but outside. It's those things you pick up while reading or associating with the already initiated. Continuous improvement is the deliberate and conscious effort you put into what you do to add value to yourself. The value you add to yourself, adds to your family, your community a...

The next logical step after schooling (or NYSC for Nigerian graduates) is to get a job. This is usually not the case for most job-seekers. Many of them have to wait from between one to ten years before landing a "good" job. Personally for me I don't believe there are no jobs. The challenge most time is how to get the available jobs. The truth is that people get new jobs everyday. People are promoted everyday and the posts they leave behind are still vacant. Businesses are being registered on a daily basis (na spirits dem employ?). After establishing the fact that there are jobs, the next thing is to have a plan and a definite strategy. You must understand that the conventional way of getting a job will not work for everybody. Your chances in the conventional ways are limited because of the population of people looking for the same thing you're looking for. Some even have better qualifications than you. That's why you need to strategize! How to plan and strategize ...

I've always thought I was different. I've always wanted a different life for myself. I've always believed I didn't have to go through the conventional path. I never wanted to experience what others experienced. I wanted to have my experiences and my path and my destiny and my purpose. I got to the higher institution after 5years of writing JAMB: 4 UME's & 3 PCE's. Finally graduated exactly 10 years after leaving secondary school. I graduated with honours and as a prize winner and also with the highest professional qualification in my field. I didn't let my background push me to the background. I pushed through many obstacles, inconveniences, discouragement, heartbreaks etc. During my service, I had mapped out the kind of firm I wanted to work in. The first was to work in one of the "big four" and the second the "biggest indigenous" firm. I wrote two (2) tests with the "big four" and got the regret mail. Exactly 10 days after...