ESUTWISE OR STREETWISE?

Welcome to November! I want to share something with those eager to enforce great change in their lives and more so if you are a startup.

For you to succeed as an Esut startup, you don’t have to be brilliant, intelligent or a hard worker all you have to do is to be Street Smart or what we call #esutwise. The only thing Esut cares about is your final delivery, no one cares about how good you are with attending lectures even though it’s very necessary, no one cares about how tactical you are in answering questions in class or where you seat during lectures, no one cares about your background, how rich your family is or your family legacy.

The only thing that matters is that we are finally here in Esut together, maybe as course mates or departmental mates. Some students prefer to take notes during lectures, others prefer to read textbooks while others choose to read past question papers, what matters most is passing the course with a good grade.

Using some experiences in Esut to drive home the point again. Meeting a Lecturer, HOD, Dean of a faculty or even the Vice-Chancellor is a challenge that needs patience and your tactical ability to conquer. Just like meeting the CEO of a conglomerate to pitch an idea. It’s never easy to do that because they won’t allow you to just walk up to them just like that. Without going through due protocols which include coming on their meeting days and sometimes when you come on those days they might be out for lunch or attending one emergency meeting or the other.

You won’t find those processes easy but there’s a simple secret to maneuvering your way and the secret mantle is their secretaries! When you neglect the power of secretaries in an establishment, be it a department, faculty or a company; they can actually frustrate all your efforts but once you can lobby your way into being their close friend either by tipping them or finding something that they are most interested in and portraying that as yours too, they will be the ones calling you when you want to meet the HOD or Dean of the faculty, once you keep servicing that relationship with them, they will even help you find your missing scripts while in the comfort of your home, they will give you timely information, and even guarantee your smooth entry to meet whoever you want to meet.

The point I was elaborating in the paragraph above about meeting a lecturer or HOD, even though it might take you about 3 to 4 days to meet them, they will give you less than 5 minutes to specify your reason for coming and if you don’t utilize it well, it might take you a month to secure that opportunity again. This is how the business world works, as a startup, no one will give you the much-needed opportunity to prove yourself but you can create that opportunity for yourself by properly managing every advantage you have. What’s the need for going to the CEO’s office and waiting all day when you can easily meet his security guard or driver, tip them and they will give you first-hand information about where and when to meet him and you will get a positive and proactive response to that proposal? It is often said “when you give a lazy man a job to do he will look for the easiest way to execute it”, that’s what it means to be #esutwise, you have to think ahead of your contemporaries and execute with the precision of an arrow.

Note that I am not telling you to cut corners or do the wrong things but you need to start thinking on your feet because the odd is not on your side, sleepless often and think more, every decision counts. You need to be prepared to pitch your idea in less than 5 minutes to any investor because naturally as humans our attention span is really short. There is also a need for you to sound smart, interesting and elaborate your point in the simplest form, you have to speak to express and not to impress. I have met a couple of students when they meet a lecturer that’s when they will speak all the ambiguous grammar they know; the lecturer might be impressed but at the end of the day they will discover that he didn’t get the main point they are trying to drive home. so be composed, confident and most importantly know your business numbers, no one is interested in the grammar but in your ability to persuade them to invest in your idea. You need to believe in your idea as much as you want others to believe in them too.

#esutmatters
#esutconnect
#esut
#iImpact

Ps. I wrote this 2 years ago.

    Joshua Onyedikachukwu Agusiobo

    Written by

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