Hey there..

So today...

I give myself permission to go off script.

Right now, of course, we're in the middle of the Dangote Refinery IPO series.

And there is still quite a bit I want us to unpack there.

But today…

I want to talk about something else.

Me.

More specifically…

A chapter of my life I don't talk about very often.

A few weeks ago...

I sat down with Yetunde Shobanjo for an episode of The Bounce Back Podcast.

And so we talked.

Really talked.

About building a business that generated more than ₦1 billion in revenue.

About what happened when things began to fall apart.

About finding myself staring at obligations that, at one point, amounted to roughly ₦1.5 billion when you included principal and commitments that had been made.

About losing money.

Losing the business.

Having to deal with people I owed.

Negotiating.

Paying some obligations in cash.

Settling some in other ways.

Having some written off.

Bartering where that made sense.

And then…

Figuring out what exactly you do with yourself when the world you spent years building no longer exists.

It was an interesting conversation for me.

Because there are things that look perfectly obvious when you look backwards…

but which were anything but obvious while you were living through them.

And perhaps the most interesting thing I discovered wasn't what I lost.

It was what I didn't lose.

Because when the money disappeared…

I discovered that some assets survived.

Knowledge survived.

Skill survived.

Relationships survived.

Experience survived.

My ability to create value survived.

My ability to think survived.

And perhaps most importantly…

the lessons survived.

Looking back now, I can see that many of the things I obsess about today did not emerge from theory.

Why I think intellectual property should be treated as an asset.

Why I keep talking about codifying what you know.

Why I am fascinated by trust.

Why I believe an expert should build assets that continue producing value long after the original transaction has ended.

Why I think there is an enormous difference between having a successful business…

and possessing the ability to produce valuable outcomes repeatedly.

Some of those convictions have fingerprints from that period all over them.

And that's one reason I'm glad I had this conversation.

Not because I particularly enjoy talking about losing everything.

😂

I don't.

But because distance has given me the ability to see distinctions in the experience that I couldn't see while I was inside it.

And those distinctions are valuable.

The episode debuted this weekend.

If you'd like to hear the conversation, you can watch it here:

[CLICK HERE TO WATCH MY BOUNCE BACK CONVERSATION ]

There's actually much more to the story than we could possibly cover in one interview.

And there were several things I said during the conversation that I found myself thinking about afterwards:

"Hmmmm…that deserves a much deeper explanation."

So I'll probably come back to this.

Not today.

We still have unfinished business with Mr Dangote. 😂

Tomorrow, we go straight back to the IPO series.

But once we're done with that…

I think I may take you behind the scenes of this story properly.

Not merely to tell you what happened.

But to extract the distinctions.

What worked.

What failed.

What I misunderstood.

What I would never do again.

And perhaps most importantly…

what I know now that I wish I knew then.

For today though…

It's Sunday.

Go off script with me.

Watch the conversation.

[WATCH THE FULL BOUNCE BACK INTERVIEW ]

Till tomorrow...

Be dangerously useful

Get out of your own way.

CTM

P.S. There is a distinction I've been thinking about since recording this conversation:

You can lose the business without losing the capability that created the business.

Those are not the same asset.

We'll come back to that.