Grew up in the UK, raised by foster parents, went on to graduate one of the youngest doctors in UK at 21, got a research scholarship to Japan and then something tragic happened her sister passed on, she was a sickle cell patient and during one of her holidays in Nigeria she had an attack and no competent health-care facility was around to help, the closest air ambulance that could have helped lift her to competent healthcare hands was in far-away South Africa and before logistics could be finalized she died and that’s where I learnt my first lesson from Ola. Life isn’t always fair but you can choose to turn every sad event into an opportunity to say ‘NEVER AGAIN’. She rose out of those ashes and established Nigeria’s first and only Air Ambulance Service to help numerous others like her sister in similar situations.
So two years on I was privileged to be in an event last week where she was billed to speak and I eagerly anticipated her speech and she didn’t disappoint.
She gave 3 life nuggets for youths in everyday living and for those looking to entrepreneurship:
1) BE BOLD: for a female less than 30, in a culture traditionally ruled by men to manage a fleet of 20 aircraft and run the only air ambulance service in West Africa that takes some boldness.
2) Master the art of saving over spending: growing up in the UK its easy to assume that Ola’s education was a smooth sail but guess what she sponsored herself through medical school paying for her bills and upkeep. She had an online site as a student where she sold shoes and physically rode her bikes for one to two hours to deliver the purchased items to the customers. Her saddest day she recollects was when during a Christmas break the family was at home relaxing and she had to go deliver some purchased shoes to a customer in the cold snow and as she pedaled away she got knocked down by a truck. The saving culture she developed to help scale through school still sticks with her today despite more cash being available to her use. She doesn’t spend on impulse, buys a few quality clothes to rotate and has used only one female handbag for the past two years! And doesn’t see the need to change the bag yet!
3) DEVELOP THE RIGHT MINDSET: Coming to Nigeria from the UK there was an obvious culture shock and she had lots of things to heap blames on ranging from the inept government to corrupt officials to lack of funds and the list goes on but she realized that it was in this same clime that many other businesses have grown to be multimillion and multibillion dollars strong and she choose to look at the good side of every bad side and business opportunity of every challenge.
All these sound like things we have heard over and over again from motivational speakers but there’s just this weight that an advice carries from someone that has personally passed through the experiences and come out successful.
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