“My business education did not begin in a classroom. It began in a market. Surrounded by some of the sharpest traders in Nigeria. And one very determined Yoruba woman who refused to be outcompeted.”

That woman was my mother.

She did not just run a shop. She ran a masterclass. Every single day. Whether she knew it or not.

Her shop sat right in the middle of an Igbo dominated market. And if you know anything about Igbo traders, these people are not playing. Business is not just what they do. It is who they are. The energy. The sharpness. The hustle. You breathe it in whether you like it or not.

We had sales girls. Two, sometimes three. And then there was us. The children. Also working. Also very much part of the operation. Except we had no salary. No contract. No HR department to report our grievances to.

I did not fully appreciate how bold that was until I became a business owner myself. Because it is one thing to start a business. It is another thing entirely to start it in an environment that will not go easy on you. Where the competition is real. Where you have to earn every single customer. Where there is no room to be average.

I Was Nine Years Old.

While other children were outside living freely and completely unbothered by the concept of sales targets, I was behind a counter. Watching. Learning. Calling out to customers. Smiling at strangers. Doing whatever it took to make people stop walking and start buying.

We were paid in kind. Which is a very polite way of saying we got food, shelter, school fees, and the absolute honour of calling her Mummy.

My mum would travel to Lagos. Buy goods. Come back. And we would sell everything. Every time. Not because we had fancy packaging or a social media strategy. But because we understood people. We knew how to draw someone in. How to make a customer feel seen. How to close a sale before the person even realised they had made a decision.

Readiness Is Built. Not Delivered.

A lot of people are waiting to feel ready before they start. Waiting for the right time. The right knowledge. The right everything. But readiness is rarely something that arrives at your door. Most of the time it is built in the process. In the doing. In the showing up even when you are not sure what you are doing yet.

I did not choose to start learning business at nine. But I am grateful every day that I did. Because every lesson I learned in that market about people, about consistency, about refusing to be outcompeted, I still use today.

Episode 2 is coming. And trust me, you do not want to miss it. 🚀